What Does This Mean?

[journeybear]

This is not exclusively a Forum issue - I see this all over - but I don't know anyone more well-versed in the inner workings of the internet, so I hope someone can explain this. Also, others may be wondering the same thing, and will benefit from your insights.

Every time I log in here - and elsewhere - I see this pop-up warning:



Is this really a cause for concern? Or is it just something that pops up automatically when a website recognizes a password that has been used before, or perhaps a certain times before? Or something else altogether?

Thanks for your time and expertise.

[Bill McCall]

It means a site where that password was used had a breach and the credentials have been uploaded to the dark web with availability to miscreants. It may not have originated at this site. If you reuse credentials across sites, all of those sites are exposed to mischief. This is really a problem of risk management, if you use the same credentials on sites containing valuable data (banks, medical, etc) and also on sites with little valued information, you're risking a large loss of either money or confidentiality. With browsers that have password vaults, changing passwords to different ones for each site and storing them seamlessly has diminished the problem of remembering credentials across multiple sites.

Apple has been doing this for a while as well, although not quite so obviously (you have to look in your settings to find the info).