Data breach
RankWatch data breach
7,445,067 accounts · breached November 19, 2016
This is a spam list: a collection of addresses used for sending bulk email. Being in it mainly means more spam and phishing. No account of yours was necessarily broken into.
What happened
In approximately November 2016, the search engine optimisation management company RankWatch exposed a Mongo DB with no password publicly whereupon their data was exfiltrated and posted to an online forum. The data contained 7.4 million unique email addresses along with names, employers, phone numbers and job titles in a table called "us_emails". When contacted and advised of the incident, RankWatch would not reveal the purpose of the data, where it had been acquired from and whether the data owners had consented to its collection. The forum which originally posted the data explained it as being "in the same vein as the modbsolutions leak", a large list of corporate data allegedly used for spam purposes.
What data leaked
- Email addresses
- Employers
- Job titles
- Names
- Phone numbers
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.
- 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.
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.