“This is such a huge problem and is, literally, affecting everyone. Yet so few people are aware of it,” said David a data security expert based in the East Midlands.

“Recent research has shown there are now 15 billion passwords available on the dark web and most of them are available free although highly desirable logins such as banking details can be sold for up to £55.”

The dark web is a part of the internet that can’t be reached by using normal browsers and it’s not indexed by Search Engines. It’s where people buy and sell illegal items, especially personal data. Passwords and login details are stolen all the time when hackers break into large companies’ systems and download huge databases - Twitter suffering a very high profile hack most recently.

“If your password is stolen and you use the same password across multiple systems, that’s when you can quickly get into really big problems,” David added.

“If hackers can use stolen data to get into one system used by your business, they can sometimes leverage this to get into other systems. The worst thing they can do is access your email, as this lets them reset passwords and monitor all your communications.”

Said David, “The only way round this is to do two things. First, you should use a different randomly generated password for every login and second, use a password manager to keep track of all these passwords for you.”