A Netherlands-based spambot called Onliner has been found to maintain a list of 711,000,000 email addresses, which are being used to send people spam and spread banking malware.

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According to security researcher Benkow, in addition to the email addresses there are also people’s passwords on the open and accessible web server.

Onliner is part of a sophisticated and large-scale operation that uses email addresses and passwords to “scope out” people for malware attacks.

Processing the largest list of data ever seen in @haveibeenpwned courtesy of a nasty spambot. I'm in there, you probably are too.

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) August 28, 2017

Scary stuff. As the tweet says, they’ve probably got you on there too – you can check if your email address is on the list by visiting anti-hacking site haveibeenpwned.com (I was on there goddammit).

If you see your email and password combination on there then stop using it ASAP and change it on all sites where you do just to be on the safe side. Additionally, if you see any suspect emails including ones disguised as invoices then don’t open them because they could be malware designed to nick your bank details. There are some dodgy people out there in the online world.

Troy Hunt from HaveIBeenPwned said that the email addresses on the huge list are likely to be targeted by spam, while the people who have had their passwords leaked are likely to be targeted to deliver spam. As said, stay safe by changing your combinations if you see your details on there. At the moment attempts are being made to get the authorities in the Netherlands to shut it down so fingers crossed that happens sooner rather than later.

However, this whole thing is a reminder that our information online is not as secure as we think. I’m just praying the day never comes when my… I mean your porn viewing history gets leaked for the world to see. Fingers crossed it never comes to that.