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Phuong Huynh
Professor Timothy Richards
CSIT 101
16 September 2014
Assignment 1: Information Literacy
There are about 5 million Gmail passwords distributed to the public in September 2014
posted on CNN homepage website. The way hacker display all the Gmail usernames and
passwords was through a Russian forum online. Google was aware of this event, but the
company claims that there was no evidence showing security breach in Googles system. Some
Google users claimed there are usernames and passwords on the list was true. Therefore, Google
tried to link those users to the step that recover their account and change their accounts
password. To keep users account safety, there are many website included Google required user
to use their phone number to register for account. From the reading, people should use different
passwords for each online account (Pagliery).
The article 5 Million Gmail Usernames And Associated Passwords Leaked examined by
Bing search engine (Kleinman). The article How to Check If You Were Exposed by Today's 5
Million Password Leak found by Yahoos search engine (Mosendz). The information about the 5
million Gmail passwords leaked found through Yahoo and Bing search engine. Bing search
engine was better than Yahoo search engine because the user can easily find the search section.
White medium search bar on the top was displaying by Bing search engine. Bing used a colorful
background to emphasize the search bar, while Yahoo created the search bar plain white mixed
with the background color. The Bing search engine indicated the number of results right under
the search bar; whereas, user have to scrolled the page down to viewed the number of results for
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Yahoo search engine. Bing gives the users updated information on the current event. When I
clicked the button search on the Bing website, it automatically shows up the article about 3 days
ago. While Yahoo search engine shows, 5 days ago article. Bing had a simplicity homepage that
Yahoo was lack.
I used the Bing Search Engine to found 5 Million Gmail Usernames and Associated
Passwords Leaked. The article published in September 10, 2014 at 12:29 PM. The Bing article
had updated at 3:20 p.m. and 7:35 p.m. (Kleinman). The article was related to my topic about 5
million Gmails account was leaked. The event time period and problem on Gmails account
security was the idea of the article. It written by Polly Mosendz, she was a reporter for Atlantic
Media, The Wire, and New York Observer. She was qualified to write about this topic because
Polly graduates from The New School University. Polly had some experience in the reporter
field and copywriter in different industries ("Polly Mosendz"). The information was not
trustworthy because it makes the viewer feel unsure what they should believe. First, the article
gives a direct link to the website called isleaked, the article stated that isleaked.com is an
illegitimate website that views users computer information. In addition, the article stated that the
website created before the publication about Gmails account got leak. Then, the updated at 7:35
p.m. gave information about two websites called securityalert and haveibeenpwned
(Kleinman).The article stated these two websites are the safeness websites to check if their
Gmails account got hacked. All the information in the article makes the viewer feel unsure
about the entire suggestion websites listed in the article. When it stated that two websites above
are the safeness website, there was no evidence back up the information. The information given
by the article to persuade people into using the two links that the article says it was the safest.
The material on the website was bias about favoring securityalert and haveibeenpwned websites
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over isleaked (Kleinman). The author had evidence back up isleaked but there was no evidence
for other two websites.
I found two journal articles on the same topic from the CCBC library database. The first
article called A survey of emerging threats in cybersecurity by Julian Jang-Jaccard and Surya
Nepal (Jang-Jaccard). The second article called Feature: The cloud challenge: realising the
benefits without increasing risk by Richard Walters (Walters). The key words I used to find the
articles are passwords leaked and cyber security. I am using ScienceDirect as my database for
both of my articles. I am choosing ScienceDirect as my database because it contains technology
content. ScienceDirect have graphs, tables and image for me to comprehend the article easier.
It was easier to access to journal article than internet article. The free web internet article
was harder to find because it contains information about any topic and it can hard to find if user
is looking for specific topic. It contains many sources user can view which are time-consuming.
Library journal articles are easier to find because it deal with specific subject and specific
audience. User can select specific database they want to search. The internet article contained
unknown contents, unauthorized authors, and no evidence statement. It is time consuming to
search an effective article when there are many article listed on the free web. In the library
database, it have advanced search where user can choose the publication date, academic journal,
available in library collection and full-text articles. The author published journal articles in the
library database are scholars and professional editors. In the free web, anyone who can access on
the internet can published an article and some unknown author.

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Works Cited (MLA)
"Polly, Mosendz." World's Largest Professional Network. Linkedin, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
Jang-Jaccard, Julian, and Surya Nepal. "A Survey Of Emerging Threats In Cybersecurity."
Journal Of Computer And System Sciences (2013): ScienceDirect. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
Kleinman, Alexis. "5 Million Gmail Usernames And Associated Passwords Leaked." The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 Sept. 2014. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
Mosendz, Polly. "How to Check If You Were Exposed by Today's 5 Million Password Leak."
Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 10 Sept. 2014. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
Pagliery, Jose. "5 Million Gmail Passwords Leaked." CNNMoney. Cable News Network, 10
Sept. 2014. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
Walters, Richard. "Feature: The Cloud Challenge: Realising The Benefits Without Increasing
Risk." Computer Fraud & Security 2012.(2012): 5-12. ScienceDirect. Web. 16 Sept.
2014.