If you're still hanging on to your old passwords, here's some news to change your mind: cybersecurity researcher Bob Diachenko and his team at Cybernews have discovered an open instance containing a massive 12TB of user data.

The bulk of the data appears to consist of information already known to have been leaked, but it is a sort of best hit package of stolen information (via PC World) and likely contains new data as well.

This reportedly includes logins, passwords, and user data for several popular sites, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Weibo, and Tencent, but given the scale of the breach, this list is far from comprehensive.

Given that many people use the same password for several different accounts, according to the study, all that is needed for these users is a single breach to access all of their accounts.

Data breaches can occur at multiple sites on an almost daily basis. A quick look at recent headlines shows a UK water provider compromised by a ransomware group, a Microsoft email security breach, and even the popular sandwich chain, Subway.

In other words, even sandwich providers are under attack. The bad guys

The good news is that there are already various ways to check that your details are not already public or in danger of being misused, such as Have I Been Pwned and similar services offered by antivirus providers such as Avast That is.

However, even these leak checkers are not always up-to-date with the latest leaks, so if you have been using the same information for a while, you should consider that there is a good chance that your information has been leaked no matter how careful you are.

Going through your accounts and changing your login information may seem like a bit of a hassle and a huge challenge for someone who has been using it long enough to have hundreds of different accounts, but at least take the time to change the login information you use most often Taking the time to change your most frequently used login information will go a long way toward improving your protection.

Of course, there are password management tools like Bitwarden and LastPass, the latter of which has been tried to break in. Of course, perfect security is impossible, but such techniques make them less likely to be targeted.

I know it's tedious, but given that so much of our lives now exist in the digital world, it's time to take online accounts as seriously as we do our homes, cars, and bank information.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some login details to go over and a backdoor lock to fix.