Recently hundreds of millions of email addresses and other types of personal identification were found in the hands of Russian hackers.

Here are some steps you can take to keep the impact of hackers to a minimum:

1. You should assume that your personal information is part of the stolen data. The wisest thing to do is to change your passwords. You should never use the same password for everything.

2. It is important that you create strong passwords. You could try a password manager like LastPass or Password Safe, which was created by security expert Bruce Schneier. These services create a unique password for each website you visit and store them in a database protected by a master password that you create. This sounds dangerous, but password managers reduce the risk of reused passwords or those that are easy to decode.

If you want to create your own passwords, do not used ones based on dictionary words. Even a word with symbols and numbers can be cracked easily.

Mr. Schneier suggests creating an anagram from a sentence and using symbols and numbers to make it more complicated.

3. Passwords are not enough. If a site offers additional security features, you should enable them.

4. It is increasingly more difficult to stop hackers from getting your information. Getting LifeLock, is one way to help you secure your personal information. They advertise themselves as the industry leader with the most comprehensive identity theft protection available.