Experian alert

AnnieP6

I have had an email from Experian to say that my details have been found online. It shows the first and last few digits of a password linked to my email address and tells me to change the password on the website. 

As far as I can see, it’s a password that I haven’t used for at least 20 years so I’ve no idea which website is involved. 

Do I need to do anything?

MorningcoffeeIV

No.  Everyone's details are found online at some point.

Unless you're in the habit of using the same password on everything, in which case you may want to change some of the more important ones.

Confusedlad

Are you 100% sure the email is from Experian. DO NOT follow any links in the email 'to their website'. It could be a scam.  If you have contact details (a phone number?) for Experian I would call them and discuss.  

400ixl

Check the email with https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Nasqueron

Confusedlad said:

Are you 100% sure the email is from Experian. DO NOT follow any links in the email 'to their website'. It could be a scam.  If you have contact details (a phone number?) for Experian I would call them and discuss.  

There is no point in ringing them, it's common for identity check sites to flag this stuff, OP is possibly paying for the Experian nonsense credit record service as Identity Plus is part of that which does these alerts. Obviously no-one should be paying Experian for any sort of credit score related system but there you go.

Google and Firefox for that matter both offer this free for any logins you have saved

AnnieP6

Thanks for the replies. Answers below:

I don’t pay anything for Experian.
The email was definitely from Experian
I have a different password for each website.
i don’t follow links in emails. Always go to the genuine site. 

I am just puzzled by the password they are showing. I do recognise it but, as I said, I have not used it for many years and can’t recall which site it refers to. 

booneruk

AnnieP6 said:

Thanks for the replies. Answers below:

I don’t pay anything for Experian.
The email was definitely from Experian
I have a different password for each website.
i don’t follow links in emails. Always go to the genuine site. 

I am just puzzled by the password they are showing. I do recognise it but, as I said, I have not used it for many years and can’t recall which site it refers to. 

There have been leaks and hacks of personal information stored on a whole load of platforms over many years now. Additionally, back in the 'good old days' your passwords to websites were often stored in unencrypted databases. If some bad actor managed to get hold of such a database then bam, they have your email and password to that service.

As mentioned earlier, the website https://haveibeenpwned.com/ documents these data leaks and allows you to search your email address to see if it was contained in any.