Technologies

5 Ways to Help Lock Down Your Data After PayPal’s Data Breach

PayPal is the latest company to investigate a digital breach. You can’t prevent these incidents, but here are ways to protect yourself online.

PayPal is the latest company to report a data breach, but it’s certainly not the only one. With cyber threat actors targeting big corporations, software companies and even apps on your phone, your personal data could be at risk. If your private information has been compromised, you often won’t learn about it until a company notifies you about a data breach. By that time your birthday, Social Security number, credit card number or health records will have already been exposed or stolen. (Here’s what to do if you think your Social Security number was stolen in the PayPal breach.)

Any stolen information that leads data thieves to your identity can let hackers do everything, from making purchases and opening up credit accounts in your name, to filing for your tax refunds and making medical claims posing as you. Billions of these hacked login credentials are available on the dark web, neatly packaged for hackers to easily download for free.

You can’t stop sites from getting hacked, but after a cyberattack, monitoring tools can alert you to which of your stolen credentials are out on the dark web, giving you a running start at limiting the damage the thieves can do. Here’s how to use two free monitoring tools — Google’s Password Checkup and Mozilla’s Firefox Monitor — to see which of your email addresses and passwords are compromised so you can take action.

Steps you can take before a data breach

First, use a password manager that creates unique passwords for each of your logins and make sure you are following password best practices. That way, if one site gets breached, your stolen password won’t give hackers access to your accounts on other sites. A good password manager can help you administer all your login information, making it easy to create and use unique passwords.

And once you find out a company or service with your credentials has been hacked, change that password, regardless if you are notified that your information was exposed in the data breach or not. You don’t want to wait days to act while the company works to uncover the extent of the hack.

How to use Google’s Password Checkup

As part of its password manager service,Google offers the free Password Checkup tool, which monitors usernames andpasswords you use to sign in to sites outside of Google’s domain andnotifies you if those login credentials have been exposed. (You mayremember Password Checkupwhen it was a Chrome extension you had to add separately to Google’sbrowser. This is the same tool folded into Google’s password manager.)

1. If you use Google’s password service to keep track of your login credentials in Chrome or Android, head to Google’s password manager site and tap Go to Check passwords.

2. Tap Check Passwords and verify it’s you.

3. Enter the password for your Google account.

4. After thinking for a bit, Google will display any issues it’s found, including compromised, reused and weak passwords.

5. Next to each reused or weak password is a Change password button you can tap to pick a more secure one.

How to use Mozilla’s Firefox Monitor

Mozilla’s free Firefox Monitor service helps you track which of your email addresses have been part of known data breaches.

1. To start, head to the Firefox Monitor page.

2. Enter an email address and tap Check for Breaches. If the email was part of a known breach since 2007, Monitor will show you which hack it was part of and what else may have been exposed.

3. Below a breach, tap More about this breach to see what was stolen and what steps Mozilla recommends, such as updating your password.

You can also sign up to have Monitor notify you if your email is involved in a future data breach. Monitor scans your email address against those found data breaches and alerts you if you were involved.

1. Near the bottom of the Firefox Monitor page, tap the Sign up for Alerts button.

2. If you need to, create a Firefox account.

3. Tap Sign in to see a breach summary for your email.

4. At the bottom of the page, you can add additional email addresses to monitor. Mozilla will then send you an email at each address you add with a subject line «Firefox Monitor found your info in these breaches» when it finds that email address involved in a breach, along with instructions about what to do about following the breach.

How else to watch for fraud

Besides using the tools from Mozilla and Google, you can take a few more steps to watch for fraud.

View your digital footprint. Bitdefender provides a dashboard with its Digital Identity Protection subscription that shows where your personal information has appeared online. It also pinpoints data breaches where your info has been leaked in the past, notifies you when your personal info appears in breaches going forward and provides recommended steps to secure your data. It also tells you whether your info is on the dark web and lets you know if someone appears to be impersonating you on social media.

Monitor your credit reports. To help you spot identity theft early, you can request one free credit report a year from each of the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — to check for unfamiliar activity, such as a new account you didn’t open. You should also check your credit card and bank statements for unexpected charges and payments. Unexpected charges can be a sign that someone has access to your account.

Sign up for a credit monitoring service. To take a more active hand in watching for fraud, sign up with a credit monitoring service that constantly monitors your credit report on major credit bureaus and alerts when it detects unusual activity. With a monitoring service, you can set fraud alerts that notify you if someone is trying to use your identity to create credit. A credit reporting service like LifeLock can cost $9 to $24 a month — or you could use a free service like the one from Credit Karma that will watch for credit fraud but not ID fraud, such as someone trying to use your Social Security number.

For more on how to keep your data secure, see our guides on how to protect your phone’s privacy, the best VPN services and why you should never trust a free VPN.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 8, #728

Here are some hints and the answers for Connections for June 8, #728.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle could be tricky. The purple category is one of those «sounds like» groups, that can be really tough to figure out. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Keep at it.

Green group hint: Think Wall Street animals.

Blue group hint: Online encyclopedia subheads.

Purple group hint: $$$.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Persist.

Green group: Animal metaphors in economics.

Blue group: Sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page.

Purple group: Homophones of slang for money.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is persist. The four answers are hold, last, stand and stay.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is animal metaphors in economics. The four answers are bear, bull, dove and hawk.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page. The four answers are born, education, occupation and spouse.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is homophones of slang for money. The four answers are bred, cache, doe and lute.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for June 8, #1450

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,450 for June 8.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle isn’t too tough, especially if your first guesses are heavy on vowels. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There are two vowels in today’s Wordle answer, but one is the repeated letter, so you’ll see it twice.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with L.

Wordle hint No. 4: Ending

Today’s Wordle answer ends with a vowel.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer refers to a contract where someone is given the right to use something for a specific time and payment.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is LEASE.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, June 7, No. 1449 was REUSE.

Recent Wordle answers

June 3, No. 1445: ADMIN

June 4, No. 1446: CEASE

June 5, No. 1447: DATUM

June 6, No. 1448: EDIFY

Technologies

Resident Evil Requiem Revealed, but Where’s Leon Kennedy?

The Resident Evil 9 trailer showed off a new character, but not the much-rumored return of Leon.

After a fake-out earlier in Summer Game Fest on Friday, Resident Evil Requiem, or Resident Evil 9, was shown for the first time.

The new title is the first mainline entry since Capcom released Resident Evil Village in 2021, and is rumored to feature series stalwart Leon Kennedy. In the trailer, the only person we saw was a character named Grace Ashcroft, who works for the FBI and appears to have ties to Raccoon City.

For the most hardcore Resident Evil fans, the name Ashcroft will ring a bell. Alyssa Ashcroft was one of the survivors of the online-only title, Resident Evil Outbreak for the PS2. Alyssa was a journalist who was trapped in Raccoon City during the events of Resident Evil 2, and she, along with other survivors, had to escape the city before it was destroyed.

Grace is Alyssa’s daughter, and in the trailer, she is going to visit the Remwood Hotel, where Alyssa was murdered. Later in the trailer, images from what appears to be the remnants of a destroyed Raccoon City are shown — including the police department from RE2 — so it appears Resident Evil 9 will return to where the series started.

Leon’s (rumored) return is a big deal for the series, which has made some of its best games with him in the starring role. He first showed up as a rookie cop in Resident Evil 2, which built on the original game’s success with more story and improved monsters and level design.

He showed up again in Resident Evil 4, which took the series in a new direction by introducing an over-the-shoulder perspective, instead of the usual static camera angles and tank controls. Leon was also one of several playable protagonists in Resident Evil 6, a game that seemed to forget about its survival horror roots. We mostly don’t talk about that one.

But the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 was an excellent return to form, bringing RE4’s gameplay and much better graphics to a fan-favorite entry. The RE4 remake was a similar success.

Resident Evil Requiem is set to drop Feb. 27, 2026, for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, but we’re hoping to get our hands on it this weekend. If you want to catch up on older Resident Evil games, Capcom is having a sale that includes basically all the games, including Village and the three remakes.