Public Business Data data breach

What happened

In approximately August 2021, hundreds of gigabytes of business data collated from public sources was obtained and later published to a popular hacking forum. Sourced from a customer of Bureau van Dijk's (BvD) "Orbis" product, the corpus of data released contained hundreds of millions of lines about corporations and individuals, including personal information such as names and dates of birth. The data also included 28M unique email addresses along with physical addresses (presumedly corporate locations), phone numbers and job titles. There was no unauthorised access to BvD's systems, nor did the incident expose any of their or parent company's Moody's clients.

What data leaked

• Dates of birth
• Email addresses
• Job titles
• Names
• Phone numbers
• Physical addresses

What to do if you had an account

1. Turn on two-step sign-in. Enable two-factor authentication where the service offers it, preferably with an authenticator app or a passkey. A leaked password alone is then not enough to get in.
2. Expect targeted phishing. Leaked contact details are used to write convincing fake messages that mention the breached company or your real name. Do not click links in unexpected emails or texts about this account; go to the site by typing its address.
3. Watch for scam calls and SIM swaps. Be suspicious of calls and texts that claim to be from your bank or a courier. Ask your mobile operator for a port-out or SIM-change PIN if it offers one.
4. Guard against identity fraud. Identity documents and dates of birth cannot be changed like a password. Consider a credit freeze or fraud alert where your country offers one, and be wary of anyone who 'verifies' you using those details.

Check your email at haveibeenpwned.com

We do not run email lookups ourselves. The search is done on haveibeenpwned.com, the service this list comes from.