Giant spambot scooped up 711 million email addresses

The scale of the scheme appears to make it the biggest find of its kind. The addresses - and in some cases associated passwords - have apparently been gathered to help spread banking malware. Members of the public can check if their accounts have been affected via the Have I Been Pwned service. Its operator, Troy Hunt, acknowledged that some of the listed addresses corresponded to non-existent accounts. But he added that the number that had been collated still totalled a "mind-boggling amount". Hidden images The Spambot discovery was first flagged by a Paris-based security expert who calls himself Benkow.