With so much news about data breaches, you have to be careful not to panic each time you hear of a new one. Take the latest report of a major breach.

In the headline for a recent story published by Cybernews, the cybersecurity media outlet said that 16 billion passwords were exposed in a record-breaking data breach, opening access to Facebook, Google, Apple, and any other service imaginable. Sounds scary, right? But reading the story itself paints a different picture.

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Despite what the headline says, the reported 16 billion passwords didn't come from a single massive data breach. Rather, this is based on 30 different datasets that Cybernews said it's been monitoring since the beginning of 2025.

"Our team has been closely monitoring the web since the beginning of the year," Cybernews said. "So far, they've discovered 30 exposed datasets containing from tens of millions to over 3.5 billion records each. In total, the researchers uncovered an unimaginable 16 billion records."

Further down in the story, Cybernews reveals that the datasets were briefly exposed, only enough for researchers to find them, but not long enough to find the source of the data. Plus, the data itself isn't necessarily new. Cybernews pointed to the datasets as a mixture of information from infostealer malware, credential stuffing sets, and repackaged leaks.

As the leaks come from multiple datasets, there are likely many duplicate records in the mix, which means that the 16 billion number is probably inflated.

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Further, Cybernews blamed other media outlets for claiming that Facebook, Google, and Apple credentials were leaked. But Bob Diachenko, a Cybernews contributor, cybersecurity researcher, and owner of SecurityDiscovery.com told Cybernews that there was no centralized data breach at any of those companies. That doesn't mean no credentials from these major tech players were included in the datasets, but simply that they themselves weren't directly hit by breaches in which data was leaked in these incidents.

Handling data breaches

Despite the tendency to proclaim that the sky is falling with every report of a data leak, breaches do occur, and they can impact you. 

They strike every industry, every sector, and every country. Breach victims can be individuals, small businesses, non-profits, or Fortune 500 companies. 

IBM estimates that the average cost of a data breach in 2024 for companies was$4.9 million, a 10% increase from the previous year.

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For individuals, the damage can be more personal than figures on a balance sheet. And while financial costs may be a factor, individual victims may face targeted phishing campaigns, social engineering schemes, identity theft, and damage to credit. They may also experience anxiety or fear over how their leaked data will be used now and in the future. 

Think you've been involved in a data breach? In this guide, we help you find out where and when, and we list the steps you should take next.

How to find out if you've been involved in a data breach

How do data breaches happen?

According to IBM, the most common initial attack vector cyberattackers use to break into a company's network is the use of compromised credentials. 

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These credentials can include account usernames and passwords that are leaked online, stolen in a separate security incident, or obtained through brute-force attacks, in which automatic scripts try out different combinations to crack easy-to-guess passwords. 

Other potential attack methods are:

• Magecart attacks: Companies like British Airways and Ticketmaster have experienced these assaults, in which malicious code is quietly injected into e-commerce payment pages to harvest your payment card information. You make an online payment to a reputable company, but your payment data is scraped and sent away to a cybercriminal.

• Malicious code injected into website domains and forms: The same tactics can be used to grab other forms of data from customers and visitors, with data stolen directly from unaware victims visiting a legitimate service. 

• Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams: BEC scams require an attacker to pretend to be a company employee, contractor, or service provider. They latch on to email threads or contact a staff member -- such as one working in the payments or customer service departments -- to trick them into handing over information or paying an invoice to the wrong bank account. 

• Insider threats: Sometimes employees have axes to grind, or cybercriminals make them an offer that they can't refuse. This can lead to your information changing hands, such as in the case of a Russian national arrested for trying to recruit US company workers to install malware on their employer's network. 

• Negligence: Unsecured servers, left open and exposed online likely due to misconfigurations, are a principal reason for data exposure and breaches. Information may also be leaked accidentally by employees.

• Falling for spam and phishing attempts: On an individual level, cybercriminals will try and get you to part with your PII and account information through spam emails, phishing domains, and more. 

• Social engineering: A scammer may impersonate you to access your account. There have been cases where customer service reps from telecom providers made changes to an account after being given information on a victim that criminals obtained -- leading to SIM-swap attacks.

How do data breaches impact you?

If you've been involved in a data breach as a user or customer, your records may have also been exposed, stolen, or leaked online.

Your personally identifiable information, including your name, physical address, email address, work history, telephone number, gender, and copies of documents including, passports and driving licenses, can all be used to conduct identity theft.

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ID theft is when someone uses your information without permission to pretend to be you. They may use your identity or financial data to conduct fraud and commit crimes. This can include tax fraud (such as refunds sent to a cybercriminal's account rather than yours), opening up lines of credit and loans in your name, medical fraud, and making fraudulent purchases online.

Criminals may also telephone a company you use, such as a telecoms provider, and pretend to be you to dupe customer representatives into revealing information or making changes to a service, such as in the case of SIM-swapping attacks.

These scenarios can impact your credit score, make you financially responsible for a loan or payment you didn't agree to, and lead to serious stress and anxiety in cleaning up your name and finances. As cybercrime is global problem, it can be extremely difficult for law enforcement to prosecute the perpetrators. 

Also: How to protect and secure your password manager

Blackmail, too, can be a factor. When extramarital affairs website Ashley Madison experienced a data breach in 2015, some users were contacted by cybercriminals threatening to tell their partners, friends, and colleagues about their activities unless they were paid.

What happens when an attacker is inside a network?

The attacker may conduct surveillance first, mapping a network to find the most valuable resources or to discover potential pathways to jump into other systems.

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The majority of data breaches are financially motivated. Attackers may deploy ransomware to blackmail their victims into paying up to regain their access to the network. In so-called "double-extortion" tactics, hacking groups may first steal confidential information and then threaten to leak it online. 

Alternatively, some may grab and go, stealing the intellectual property they came for and then erasing their tracks. Others may test their access point and sell it to other cyberattackers via the dark web. 

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In some cases, network intrusions are for one reason alone: to disrupt services and damage a company. 

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