Data breach
MDPI data breach
845,012 accounts · breached August 30, 2016
What happened
In August 2016, the Swiss scholarly open access publisher known as MDPI had 17.5GB of data obtained from an unprotected Mongo DB instance. The data contained email exchanges between MDPI and their authors and reviewers which included 845k unique email addresses. MDPI have confirmed that the system has since been protected and that no data of a sensitive nature was impacted. As such, they concluded that notification to their subscribers was not necessary due to the fact that all their authors and reviewers are available online on their website.
What data leaked
- Email addresses
- Email messages
- IP addresses
- Names
What to do if you had an account
- 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.
- 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.
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.