24 June 🚨 16 Billion Passwords Were Just Leaked — Here's What You Need to Know (and Do) June 24, 2025By Will Strohl | 2 MIN READ A major data breach just made headlines — and while it sounds alarming (and it is), this post is all about what *you* can do today to stay protected. What Happened? Over 16 billion stolen usernames and passwords were just found online. This info wasn’t stolen from Apple, Google, or Facebook directly — it was collected from past hacks, scams, and sneaky malware that grabbed people’s logins when they weren’t looking. Follow the breaking news from the originating source: Tom's Guide Additional Sources: Entrepreneur CyberNews Forbes The Guardian Why It Matters If you’ve ever used the same password in more than one place (and who hasn’t?), your accounts could be at risk. Bad actors can try those stolen passwords to break into other accounts — email, social media, even banking. Here’s What To Do Right Now Change Your Passwords – Start with your email and anything related to money. Make sure every password is different and strong. Turn On Extra Protection – Also called 2-step verification, this means even if someone has your password, they still can’t get in. Use a Password App – These apps remember your logins for you and help create better passwords, so you don’t have to think about it. See If You’ve Been Exposed – Visit HaveIBeenPwned.com and type in your email to see if your info was found in any breaches. We’re Here If You Need Help No need to panic. But this is a good reminder to take simple steps to protect yourself. If you run a small business or nonprofit and this feels overwhelming, let’s talk. You don’t have to do this alone. We help people just like you every day — and we’d be happy to help you too. Let's Chat! We'd love to work with you. Let's talk about how. Contact Us June 24, 2025By Will Strohl Business, General, Internet, Technology Cybersecurity Tips, Data Breach, Have I Been Pwned, Leaked Passwords, MFA, Password Manager, Small Business Security About the Author Will Strohl Founder & CEO Upendo Ventures Overall, Will has nearly 20 years of experience helping website owners become more successful in all areas, including mentoring, website development, marketing, strategy, e-commerce, and more. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. blog comments powered by Disqus Related Posts What You Need to Know About the TLS 1.2 Update There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks about TLS compliance requirements. There’s good reason for this, because notable vendors that are known for being on the forefront of security such as Authorize.net, PayPal, and UPS began notifying their partners and vendors about two years ago. Everyone else began receiving similar notifications about a year ago. What does this all mean though? Stop Selling to Everyone: Why You Need to Know Your Real Customer When you try to sell to everyone, you end up selling to no one. Learn how to focus your marketing so you're speaking to the right people at the right time. What Are Your Website Goals? Do You Even Know? Most small business owners launch their websites and then never look back. We get it. But "set it and forget it” could be costing you more than you realize. CMS State of the Union: Data-Based Insights From the Past Two Years If you didn’t already know, CMS is an acronym for “content management system.” A CMS is used by many developers, consultancies, and companies to build their website. It’s an incredibly common thing to do, as any flavor of CMS you choose will always save you effort and money, compared to building a website from nothing. This is especially true if you look at the lifetime investment of your website. Using a CMS framework or solution of some kind just seems to make sense. After all, this is what I’ve built my own career upon since 2001. However, then, CMS was known as a portal or portal framework. That’s a long time ago, so it’s not a bad idea to take stock of things every now and thing to see if what you’re doing is the correct thing. To this end, I asked myself, “How is CMS doing right now, and does it make sense to still be doing CMS-related work in the future?” SEO Is Changing. Here's How to Get Found by ChatGPT and AI Assistants Learn why Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is replacing traditional SEO for AI tools like ChatGPT—and what your business needs to do now to keep showing up. What Small Businesses Can Learn from a Global Hiring Scam Heard about companies getting tricked into hiring foreign operatives? Don't panic. Here's what happened, what it means for you, and how to protect your business without losing sleep.