``Have I Been Pwned?'', which allows you to check whether personal information has been leaked, celebrates its 10th anniversary



``Have I Been Pwned? '', a site where you can check whether your personal information has been leaked from your email address or username due to past personal information leaks, will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2023, the company said. This was revealed by Troy Hunt.

Troy Hunt: A Decade of Have I Been Pwned
https://www.troyhunt.com/a-decade-of-have-i-been-pwned/



Below is a tweet posted on December 4, 2012, immediately after the establishment of 'Have I Been Pwned?'.



In 2014, the weekly magazine TIME named it one of the ``50 Best Websites of the Year,'' and in 2018, the IT news site Gizmode named Have I Been Pwned? Have I Been Pwned? was selected as one of the top 100 websites , and various other media outlets have covered it. Therefore, Mr. Hunt says that the verb pwn is now becoming a word that means Have I Been Pwned?

In the first place, the 'pwnd' in the name 'Have I Been Pwned?' is said to come from a chess match that took place in 1935, several decades before the invention of the Internet. Grandmaster Alexander Alekhine, who took part in the match, seemed to have had a little too much to drink the day before, and while still inebriated, he yelled at his opponent, Max Juve, 'I'll pawn your knight!' and slapped him. There is an anecdote that it did.

In the 1960s, students studying computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were actively developing chess programs. It seems that the students were competing between programs, but at that point, the verb ``pawn'' was used to mean ``to drag someone down.''

In the early hacking culture that arose in the late 1980s, the word 'own' was used when gaining administrative control of someone else's computer, and the words 'O' and 'P' Perhaps because they were next to each other on the keyboard, the input error 'pwn' became established as slang. The meaning of the word 'pawn' also overlaps with that, and it seems that 'pwn' has come to mean 'to illegally hijack or steal data.'

Although Have I Been Pwned? is so well-known that it is now recognized as a verb, it has not been operating smoothly over the past 10 years. In 2019, Mr. Hunt considered selling Have I Been Pwned? and was looking for a buyer himself.

``Have I been pwned?'', which tells you whether your email address has been leaked for free, is recruiting buyers - GIGAZINE



A whopping 141 companies came forward to acquire Have I Been Pwned?, but in the end Mr. Hunt announced that he would not sell Have I Been Pwned? and would continue to run it alone as before. doing.

141 companies have come forward to acquire the personal information leak confirmation site 'Have I Been Pwned?' but the sale has been canceled - GIGAZINE



According to Mr. Hunt, the reason behind this was that Mr. Hunt himself was suffering from mental stress due to divorce issues. However, the project to sell Have I Been Pwned?, coupled with a long and painful legal battle with his ex-wife, seems to have increased his mental burden. Although the contract to sell the property was ultimately concluded, the fulfillment of the contract ended in failure, and naturally there was no talk of selling it.

Mr. Hunt also said that he did not expect the FBI to actively provide data to Have I Been Pwned?. Not only the FBI but also law enforcement agencies around the world are providing data as well. Mr. Hunt commented, ``I never imagined that there would be a time when the governments of dozens of countries would be willing to discuss the use of Have I Been Pwned?''.

Mr. Hunt received a letter of appreciation and commemorative badge from the FBI in April 2023.



Mr. Hunt argued that password information should not be included in Have I Been Pwned?'s database. However, Mr. Hunt thought that publishing a list of compromised passwords makes sense in terms of contributing to society, and in 2017 he started a separate search service called ``Pwned Passwords''. According to Hunt, Pwned Passwords received 301.6 million search requests in the fourth week of November 2023 alone.

``Pwned Passwords'' service that allows you to check for free whether your password is a dangerous one listed in past leaked data - GIGAZINE



However, it has been said that there have been many complaints about Have I Been Pwned? and Pwned Passwords that they violate privacy due to ``the presence and absence of the Internet''. When asked about people who say, ``I'm going to report you to the FBI for stealing data!'', Hunt says, ``Just Google ``Troy Hunt FBI''.''

However, in the past 10 years, only one legitimate complaint has been filed against Have I Been Pwned? through a government privacy regulator, and Mr. When I answered politely, it seemed like everything was over.

Mr. Hunt seems to have thought about establishing a company and operating Have I Been Pwned?, but it did not go well for various reasons, and he said that it was a project that he continued almost alone.

However, with the help of new partners, Have I Been Pwned? will become a corporation around 2021, allowing them to share organizational management, code creation, and cleanup with others. Mr. Hunt's spouse, Mr. Charlotte, serves as the COO (Chief Operating Officer) of the incorporated Have I Been Pwned?.



Stefán Jökull Sigurðarson is in charge of code creation and cleanup on a part-time basis.



'Right now, all I can say is that there will be more data breaches,' Hunt said. 'I have commented many times that the scourge of ransomware seems to be accelerating in recent years. What percentage of people will know that their information is exposed on the Internet? Indexing it will become an increasingly valuable task I think so. I'm looking forward to seeing how I feel when I wake up tomorrow morning.'

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