Have you been hacked? New report says millions of personal information has been stolen

Russian hackers gathered information from over 420,000 websites, both smaller sites and "household name" sites, in an attempt to gather passwords to send out spam.

LOS ANGLES, CA (Catholic Online) - Hold Security, a Milwaukee-based firm, discovered the theft but did not reveal the identities of the affected websites due to nondisclosure agreements and a desire to prevent already vulnerable systems from being targeted, but the firm's founder, Alex Holden, did announce that no major email providers were breached.

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The hackers make money by hacking into email and social accounts, posing as friends and family, and advertising bogus products, which means that if you see strange messages being sent from your accounts or those of friends you or they might have been hacked.

"It's really not that impactful to the individuals, and that's why they were under the radar for so long," said Holden. "They've ignored financial information almost completely."

Hackers from Russia and Eastern Europe are known for sophisticated cyber-attacks intended to gather credit and debit-card data for financial gain.

This theft shows that individuals need to better manage their credentials, cybersecurity experts say, most people use the same password for multiple services, including banking, email and social media accounts, which allows a single bit of password info to be a treasure trove for internet hackers.

The CEO of cybersecurity firm Synack, Jay Kaplan, criticized companies that have not been alert enough about their own security.

"It's likely that most of them do not even realize how many times they've been compromised," he said.

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