Was YOUR password exposed? See if your details were among the 10 million leaked as part of a security experiment

• e-mail

Earlier this week a security researcher leaked a staggering 10 million usernames and passwords online. 

He said the move was for research purposes, and details were stripped of certain details to protect the accounts from cybercriminals. 

Now, a programmer has built a search tool that lets concerned users scour the list for their personal details. 

Scroll down for video 

Earlier this week a security researcher leaked a staggering 10 million usernames and passwords online. Programmer Luke Rehmann has now built a search tool that lets concerned users scour the list for their personal details. He warned that the site may be slow to load during times of peak traffic

The tool was built by Michigan-based student Luke Rehmann. 

He said: 'Many people expressed an interest to see if their username or password appeared in this dump of 10 million. 

'This data dump is a tiny sample of the hundreds of millions of accounts that have been publicly dumped over the years.' 

He advises people only to search for the first four characters of their details to prevent the username or password being stored on their browser's auto-complete list. 

And if people do find their information on the database, he said they should change their password information as a matter of course.

He also warned that his site may be slow to load during times of peak traffic.

The original list was leaked by security consultant Mark Burnett. 

Mr Burnett said in a blog post that his decision to publish the data in full - which was gathered from thousands of global incidents over the last five years, instead of a specific hack - was designed to help experts better understand how people pick their passwords.

For example, the data could be used to work out how often people include their usernames within their passwords, Ars Technica reported.

‘Analysis of usernames with passwords is an area that has been greatly neglected and can provide as much insight as studying passwords alone,’ he wrote. 

He said he is concerned that the publication of the data may get him in legal trouble, however.

‘Recent events have made me question the prudence of releasing this information, even for research purposes,’ he said, citing the example of the prosecution of Anonymous activist Barrett Brown. 

'The FBI took advantage of him linking to a data dump to initiate charges of identity theft and trafficking of authentication features,' according to Mr Burnett.

‘I think this is completely absurd that I have to write an entire article justifying the release of this data out of fear of prosecution or legal harassment.

The original list was leaked by security consultant Mark Burnett. He said that his decision to publish the data in full was to help experts understand how people pick their passwords. He stripped out necessary data to stop criminal hackers using the passwords and username for unscrupulous means

‘I had wanted to write an article about the data itself but I will have to do that later because I had to write this lame thing trying to convince the FBI not to raid me.’

In his defence, the researcher said: ‘In the case of me releasing usernames and passwords, the intent here is certainly not to defraud, facilitate unauthorised access to a computer system, steal the identity of others, to aid any crime or to harm any individual or entity.

‘The sole intent is to further research with the goal of making authentication more secure and therefore protect from fraud and unauthorised access.’

To ensure that the logins could not be used for illegal purposes, he removed the domain portion from email addresses, mixed up data from different leaks so it could not be traced to any particular company and removed keywords such as company names or any data that could be linked to an individual.

He also removed information that could be a credit card number and any accounts suspected as belonging to government or military members.