New Windows 10 App “Hacked?” Can Notify You When Accounts Have Been Compromised in Major Data Breaches

If you're like most people, you probably use a number of different sites and services that require you to create an account, whether it be for online banking, shopping, entertainment, or email. Unfortunately, keeping up with the security of every account can be a tedious task if you were to actually take it seriously enough to check the account logs on a daily basis. Luckily, the developers at Lancelot Software have created a Windows 10 app called “Hacked”? that can notify you when any of your accounts have been compromised in a major data breach. Here are a few screenshots of the app:

Welcome Screen:

Main Window:

Left Sidebar:

An Automated Way to Regularly Check HaveIBeenPwned.com

Here's how it works: you input your email addresses into the app and it will automatically run them through haveibeenpwned.com to see if your accounts were included in any recently reported data breaches. In case you're not familiar with Have I Been Pwned, the site was created by industry expert Tony Hunt to help people easily check if their accounts have been hacked within a regularly updated, centralized database of breaches. You can visit the home page to see a list of the top 10 most recent breaches, as well as a live tally of the amount of pwned accounts that have been listed on the site.

Monitoring Multiple Accounts on a Timed Basis

To make things easier, not only can you add multiple email accounts, but you can also enable the “Monitoring Task” feature to automatically check the accounts every 12 hours. This can be useful if you want to receive a notification as soon as it has been discovered that one of your accounts have been breached. After all, who has the time to read all the latest hacking news to see if any of the companies they have accounts with have been breached?

Monitoring Task Enabled:

App Won't Catch All Breaches, Manual Monitoring Still Recommended

It is important to note that, while haveibeenpwned.com has a good reputation for staying on top of the largest breaces, it is only based on industry reports, so there's still the possibility that your accounts could be hacked without your personal breach appearing in haveibeenpwned.com. There's also the possibility that it could take several weeks or months for the breach to be discovered, so in that time frame your account could be hacked without your knowledge.

Therefore, the best way to maintain the utmost security in all of your accounts is to manually check which devices and IP address have been logging in, if such log features are available. With that said, it could still be a useful tool for at least becoming aware when your accounts have been involved in one of those major corporate breaches we often hear about.

App Not Working For Many Users

Sadly, the app was just released within the past few days and there are already a number of people complaining that it does not work for them due to the appearance of the “Oops, something went wrong when searching for breaches. Please check your internet and try again” error message (shown below), which I also encountered:

It is somewhat upsetting to see an app with such great potential not working for the majority of users shortly after its release. I'm using a 64-bit version of Windows 10 and haven't had any similar problems from other apps, so there's obviously a bug that needs to be addressed here. Several disgruntled downloaders have asked that the app be fixed by the developers, so hopefully that request will be honored. We'll keep you updated either way.