A vast data breach has been announced, that is said to possibly be the biggest breach ever posted on the internet. Cyber security experts have warned that this could just be the beginning.

Cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt reported a list of more than 2.6 billion records had been exposed. These contained around 773 million unique email addresses and more than 21 million unique passwords. The stolen details are likely to be in use for years as hackers attempt to take over affected users accounts.

It is becoming apparent that there are a host of similar collections being passed around the web, many of which are far bigger than the Collection #1. Cyber security journalist Brian Krebs reported, after speaking with a seller of such collections, that Collection #1 is just one part of a numbered series, that taken together dwarfs the initial data breach that has been posted publicly. Collection #1 is roughly 87GB in size. Altogether, the whole collection is said to total more than ten times that.

Experts have said that those hacks were just the beginning, and that further email addresses and logins were likely to be discovered.

“This is a start of something far more significant than anything we have seen before,” said Jake Moore, cyber security specialist at ESET. “Hackers are becoming even more sophisticated and, hopefully, this is a massive wake-up call to anyone with an email address.”

The speculation that Collection #1 is that start of something bigger is highlighted by a new Collection leak, dubbed Collection #2-5. This leak, which contains 2.2 billion unique usernames and passwords, was first reported by Heise. In total it contains 845GB of data and more than 25bn records.

Over 1,000 downloads of private information has been reported. The increase of information is a serious consideration, and now there is more than one copy of the information makes it impossible to completely remove from the web.

We recommend to always use Two-Factor Authentication wherever it’s available. This method requires a password and further validation from another source (e.g. email or text). Two-Factor Authentication is highly recommended to secure and protect your personal data.

We also advise for maximum security to regularly change and update your passwords.