In response to Asis "Can HackCheck check e-mail addresses that are in your hotmail or gmail account?"

Regarding Abelssoft HackCheck v4.01Core v8.8 Build v41879 Date 2022-10-25

The program monitors ANY email address or phone number the WE TYPE IN, manually.

The program does NOT scan our email boxes or our email contact list.

We have to manually type in, one at a time, whatever email address or phone number we want to be monitored, their website promises that we can enter and monitor an unlimited number of email addresses to monitor.

So, for example, if we want to check someone else's email address or phone number, yes, the program can do that, the program does not 'know' if anything we type in is ours or even accurate.

Most important to me is that the program DOES NOT check our specific passwords, so if we have changed our password at any compromised site AFTEr any passwords were stolen from that site, the alarm will continue to be presented by Hack Check, even though the stolen credentials are out of date and useless to hackers/crackers.

Then, if we manually 'cancel' the alarm because we think we have made ourselves safe again by changing our password at the compromised site, we may not then be subsequently 'alarmed' if the site becomes compromised again, or more is learned about the original hack that was not reported at first, and or our new password has been compromised - this program does NOT deal with such ongoing remedies and compromises.

It reports only generally that passwords were stolen on a particular date, but it does NOT check our particular passwords, nor does it have any place to keep track of us changing our passwords after the reported hacking date.

It is not clear if the program will re-alarm us if a hacked site is ever reported as being re-hacked after we changed our password, after we think we are 'safe'.

I'm beginning to think I need to put a date-code cipher in my passwords so when I look at them, I can tell how old they are, so when I see a hack happened in, say 2008, I know which of my passwords have been updated since then, and which of my passwords are older and need to be changed, simply inserting '22' at the beginning of passwords this year will quickly let me see a year from now how old they are, for example.

The program offering is 'lifetime', versus the free version that presumably referts to 'trial' after 30 days, and has a purchase nag when closing the program - many Abelssoft programs work in full or slightly diminished mode free forever accompanied by nags to buy.

We cannot highlight and copy the reports from inside Hack Check.

This program listed for me information sourced from FREE [ Have I Been Pwned - haveibeenpwned. com ] where we can check stuff ourselves, free, one item at a time, manually - and we can highlight and copy report from HaveIBeenPawned, for example:

"... Verifications.io: In February 2019, the email address validation service verifications.io suffered a data breach. Discovered by Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia, the breach was due to the data being stored in a MongoDB instance left publicly facing without a password and resulted in 763 million unique email addresses being exposed. Many records within the data also included additional personal attributes such as names, phone numbers, IP addresses, dates of birth and genders. No passwords were included in the data. The Verifications.io website went offline during the disclosure process, although an archived copy remains viewable. Compromised data: Dates of birth, Email addresses, Employers, Genders, Geographic locations, IP addresses, Job titles, Names, Phone numbers, Physical addresses ..."

Google also has a password compromise checker [ passwords. google. com ] - free, and if we have an account at Google, it then walks us through changing compromised passwords by linking us to each compromised site's password reset screen - nice.

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Pros of Hack Check: it checks for us on demand or in the background 'a couple of times a day', and can automatically check multiple emails and multiple phone numbers ( in international format ), alarming us of any newly discovered events.

Cons: no comprehensive assistance or management of changes we should make or have made to separate ourselves from compromised information., we have to leave the program to address the alarms, and the program has no way of tracking our remedies.

Thanks for letting us explore this and share.
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"I'm beginning to think I need to put a date-code cipher in my passwords... simply inserting '22' at the beginning of passwords this year will quickly let me see a year from now how old they are, for example."

Not a bad idea IMHO. I use the older, portable KeePass, which shows the creation & modification dates, which I've found handy for that.

"This program listed for me information sourced from FREE [ Have I Been Pwned - haveibeenpwned. com ] where we can check stuff ourselves, free, one item at a time, manually - and we can highlight and copy report from HaveIBeenPawned, for example:"

FWIW, Have I Been Pwned has a notification service -- click the "Notify me" button at the top of their home page -- to do just that if your email shows up in their database at a later date.

Peter Blaise, thanks for your retailed reply, much appreciated.

In response to mike [ snipped ] "... Have I Been Pwned has a notification service -- click the "Notify me" button at the top of their home page -- to do just that if your email shows up in their database at a later date ..."

That works ONLY for emails that we have access to receiving, so we cannot get notices on other people's emails that way, or even our own emails if they have been compromised and ew have bene locked out.

Abelssoft Hack Check WILL track emails that we do not have access to receiving.

Thanks for exploring this and sharing.
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Mike,
I doubt it but it would be nice if it was clearly stated in the blue info box above, e.g.; 'Lifetime/No Updates', '1yr/Including Updates', etc. Perhaps someone from the vendor or the GOTD team will verify that for you.

I've never seen a giveaway that included lifetime updates since the vendors offer these programs to try, obviously, with the hope that people will like them enough to buy.

jman, and Mike

Please read what is written in readme file

c) no free upgrades to future versions

Paweł,

Thank you for the reply but I stand by what I stated. It belongs in the blue info box above as well as the readme file.