I found the info not actionable because it wouldn’t say what actual values were posted.
I have a common name Gmail account. The password is rather complex and I would be surprised if it leaks as only I and Google know it. However, I would get reports that it’s on the dark web with blanked out password values. So I never knew if they actually compromised or just something else.
They would also report when some random site that used my Gmail address as user id was on the darknet that I don’t care about. I don’t care if my fidofido account is leaked. I never use it and if I did, then I would reset.
I think if the data were useful Google would have kept this up.
I bet they keep tracking though, just keep the reports internal.
Tangental, but I found 'Have I Been Pwned' useless too because you can't enter your email and find leaked passwords associated with the address, instead you have to enter each password (and repeat for every password you want to check).
I know there's an explanation that the raw password is not being sent and instead being hashed locally and only part of the hash is sent. But I don't know how to verify that and it feels wild to type passwords into a random website. (if anyone knows how to verify HIBP does only what it says it does [rather than blindly trust and hope for the best], would love to read more about it)
I always thought that it could be reasonably simple to have a safe alternative. Have people enter a SHA256 of their password instead, and match against a database of other hashes.
Almost everyone interested in checking for password leaks knows how to generate SHA256 of a string. And those who don't shouldn't put their passwords on the internet.
Or even better, generate hash for all passwords in the database, package these hashes together with a simple search script and let people download it. That way, you are not sending any information anywhere, and noone can exploit the passwords, because hash is a one way function.
Then again, that download could be really large. I admit I have no idea how much storage would that take. But it's just text, so easily compressible. And with some smart indexing, it should be possible to keep most compressed and only unpack a relatively small portion to find a complete match.
Then again, I have virtually no background in cryptography, could be something horribly wrong with this.
When you do a check on https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords nothing is sent to the server. Instead the password is hashed locally and a list of the hash range is downloaded, which contains all the hashes and the number of occurrences.
The server doesn't receive the password, neither in plain-text nor hash form.
Well of course a hostile actor could use this incredibly accessible resource to test a bunch of emails and find their passwords.
Though perhaps there could be a service where you enter in an email address and it sends an email to that address containing the passwords. That would be a slightly more complicated server to set up though
I never got the Google dark web reports, but my credit card used to send me reports constantly saying that my email address was 'found on the darkweb.' Okay, that's not useful information. If it showed me if there were associated passwords, that might be helpful, but just saying my address was found on the darkweb is meaningless. My email address is public information.
The worst part is, it was an email address I hadn't used in about 10 years, and they wouldn't let me take it out of the report.
Or, use a service that lets you generate an address for each business you deal with or use case you have so you can treat them as disposable. After chasing down spammers and companies selling my info, including my email, I found this was easier to keep up with and is more effective. Spam me once or sell it to another company, and I burn that address, replacing it with the original company if I really need them to keep in contact.
I tried to do that but found out there's almost no services that I would want to treat my account there disposable. If I bother to provide them my email address -- I usually also want to access my account there later (e.g check order status).
There are tens of services where I'd like it disposable, but hundreds of services where account is warranted. And some of those thousands will be compromised some day.
You can do this with aliases. For example Firefox's relay (or you can do it with a website and cloudflare). They'll also give you a catchall domain so you can either have generated emails like "adafergtrees@mozmail.com" or "NameOfArbitraryBusiness@deepsun.mozmail.com". If you want to trash an email you can do that too.
I'd distinguish between an address one can choose to dispose of in an organized way versus an account you don't want to lose access to.
I have my own domain, and pay a hosting company to manage the e-mail, which means it's easy to have ton of forwarding-only addresses for different purposes.
This means that I register with mybank123@domain, if that ever leaks I can log in with them and change my e-mail to a new forwarding-address of mybank456@domain. Then retire the older one.
Yeah.. I have a five letter email that's a common first and last name @ gmail.com. I second everything you said. Getting report hits every few days are useless given how few sites do any kind of validation. :-/
While this was a free service and thus Google is under no obligation to continue offering this service, this is still quite sad. They could have atleast bundled it for some tier of Google One paid subscription.
It was as inactionable and useless as the ones that ID.me or whatever sends. Also calling it Dark Web report always felt super insincere. It had nothing to do with the "dark web", that just served a way to make it sound cooler and more hackery. Aren't we talking about something that's equivalent to HaveIBeenPwned?
I might be misremembering this but FWICR on Chrome it would link your saved passwords with the dark web report, and automatically recommend you change any account that had the same password as the "pwned" account found in the dark net. Was pretty useful.
Apple has this feature on iOS. no idea where they source the info from, but in your keychain it will say something like "this password has appeared in a data leak"
Discover (Card/Bank) also announced recently that they are stopping their dark web report service. I wonder if they just used Google, or if it's a coincidence...
dark web reports in general, seem to be a funnel for paid "security" and monitoring services, VPNs AV suites, typically you review your passwords for strength and redundancy, then you are redirected to buy some service, that ultimately looks like a data hoover, and put everything in a cloud scheme. now we have AI and FOMO to hook and reel in, seemingly more effective than darkweb boogeymen for adoption and revenue.
I set it up for an old Google account that has been breached. It did a relatively good job, but HIBP has more data in my experience, albeit it mainly looks at emails, whereas Google's report can do lookups by full name, address, and phone number. I think it was useful, but did not get enough love to be like a second HIBP.
Is there a product that will do go through the vast expanse of accounts you have and either delete them or mass-change their passwords? I basically I wish to shrink my online presence as much as possible, but doing it manually would mean finding all the various accounts I have, logging in, trying to close, etc. Seems like good fit for an LLM browser agent.
No, not really. The way this worked is that if they detected personal information on a "dark web" (per their definition -- I have no idea what this actually meant) site, they would show you a report that told you which PII was listed, and it was usually things like your fname/lname, address, phone or location. The problem is that it wasn't actionable [because it was the dark web], unlike their current personal data privacy features and data removal tool.
This is one where I don't blame them for killing it because "it" wasn't really even a product -- it was just a very basic, not useful at all, report.
That's not how it reads to me. I think it's more that they feel they can't share enough information to make it useful without compromising their operating methods. Which is an eternal struggle with stuff like that: the bad guys are reading too.
That's my read. That it's not a revenue generator and taking server resources that could go to something that is making them money. They've at least added more things to Google One over the past year which softens the blow.
Doubtful. The issue is probably the service needs to be moved to some framework that isn't deprecated and being turned off, and no one can justify side projects these days that don't sell an AI product.
I have a common name Gmail account. The password is rather complex and I would be surprised if it leaks as only I and Google know it. However, I would get reports that it’s on the dark web with blanked out password values. So I never knew if they actually compromised or just something else.
They would also report when some random site that used my Gmail address as user id was on the darknet that I don’t care about. I don’t care if my fidofido account is leaked. I never use it and if I did, then I would reset.
I think if the data were useful Google would have kept this up.
I bet they keep tracking though, just keep the reports internal.
Tangental, but I found 'Have I Been Pwned' useless too because you can't enter your email and find leaked passwords associated with the address, instead you have to enter each password (and repeat for every password you want to check).
I know there's an explanation that the raw password is not being sent and instead being hashed locally and only part of the hash is sent. But I don't know how to verify that and it feels wild to type passwords into a random website. (if anyone knows how to verify HIBP does only what it says it does [rather than blindly trust and hope for the best], would love to read more about it)
Almost everyone interested in checking for password leaks knows how to generate SHA256 of a string. And those who don't shouldn't put their passwords on the internet.
Or even better, generate hash for all passwords in the database, package these hashes together with a simple search script and let people download it. That way, you are not sending any information anywhere, and noone can exploit the passwords, because hash is a one way function.
Then again, that download could be really large. I admit I have no idea how much storage would that take. But it's just text, so easily compressible. And with some smart indexing, it should be possible to keep most compressed and only unpack a relatively small portion to find a complete match.
Then again, I have virtually no background in cryptography, could be something horribly wrong with this.
When you do a check on https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords nothing is sent to the server. Instead the password is hashed locally and a list of the hash range is downloaded, which contains all the hashes and the number of occurrences.
The server doesn't receive the password, neither in plain-text nor hash form.
Though perhaps there could be a service where you enter in an email address and it sends an email to that address containing the passwords. That would be a slightly more complicated server to set up though
The worst part is, it was an email address I hadn't used in about 10 years, and they wouldn't let me take it out of the report.
There are tens of services where I'd like it disposable, but hundreds of services where account is warranted. And some of those thousands will be compromised some day.
I have my own domain, and pay a hosting company to manage the e-mail, which means it's easy to have ton of forwarding-only addresses for different purposes.
This means that I register with mybank123@domain, if that ever leaks I can log in with them and change my e-mail to a new forwarding-address of mybank456@domain. Then retire the older one.
What are the common two-letter first or last names?
For first names… Jo, Ty, Al, maybe?
Alternatives: haveibeenpwned.com (free), 1Password Watchtower, Bitwarden breach reports.
The harder part isn't knowing about breaches—it's actually rotating passwords afterward. Most people know they should but don't because it's tedious.
Automated rotation tools are emerging but need careful security architecture (local-only, zero-knowledge) to avoid creating new attack vectors.
I remember email and phone being the major ones. A kind of improved haveibeenpwned
such a product must be crafted to mitigate its own abuse, as well as the original problem.
I know it's still active because I see someone with that handle posting on bluesky regularly.
Translation: We don’t actually want to keep spending time, money, and resources on this.
This is one where I don't blame them for killing it because "it" wasn't really even a product -- it was just a very basic, not useful at all, report.