It was a cool coincidence that I received an email from SurfsharkVPN this morning telling me that their service HackLock has been renamed and is now called Alert instead. That in itself isn’t so interesting, but on the very same morning I received an email from Surfshark Alert that one of my email addresses and passwords had been part of a data breach back in 2016. What a coincidence!
I have been writing about HackLock before, so if you want to know more about what the present service Alert from SurfsharkVPN is all about, make sure to check out that article. If I am to make it short, this is what Surfshark Alert is all about.
What is Surfshark Alert all about (former HackLock)?
We all have users registered on all sorts of websites and platforms online. We then create a user registered with a username (often your email address) and a password. From time to time, hackers get hold of data from websites during hacking attempts, and this is when a data breach take place. As a result, often millions of usernames and passwords are stolen, and later sold on the dark web. This information can be super useful to hackers, simply because they know that many people use the same login credentials everywhere.
In other words, if you registered the address [email protected] at Dailymotion back in 2016, with the password iamstupid123, then the hackers might try to do one out of several things.
- Hackers can send emails trying to blackmail you.
They use the email address and password, and by doing so, they give you the feeling that they know who you are and that they are spying on you. Since the username/password combination often is correct, people normally feel very threatened by such emails, and some people even pay to make the problem go away. - Hackers use your credentials to access other sites you have access to.
If you are registered with the address [email protected] with the password iamstupid123 at DailyMotion during such a breach, one of the first things hackers might do is to try to login to your actual gmail account using the same credentials. If they manage to get access to your email, then they can mostly gain access to your history online and see which websites you use and where you are registered. The possibilities are endless!
And that leads us to Surfshark Alert once again.
Surfshark Alert pays attention to the lists of usernames and passwords leaked during those big data breaches. You can register your email addresses in the control panel, and whenever Surfshark Alert discovers your email address in one of those leaks, you will be alerted.
If you get such an alert, the best option is to change the password on the platform in discussion. If you use the same username/address combination with the same password on other platforms, it is time to make a big change to protect your identity and accounts online.
So, that is what Surfshark Alert is all about. It is a really useful tool!
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You can also use SurfsharkVPN to unblock Netflix, and of course, to encrypt your online activities (after all, that is what a VPN is all about)! If you want to know even more about SurfsharkVPN, why don’t you check out our SurfsharkVPN review which can be found right here.
