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.

When did it happen?

The breach date in the public record is August 19, 2021. The record was added to the catalogue on October 9, 2023 and last updated there on December 6, 2023.

What information was reported as exposed?

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

These are incident-level categories. The record does not prove that every category was exposed for every affected person.

Who may be affected?

This record may be relevant to people who had an account or other relationship with Public Business Data or used bvdinfo.com around August 19, 2021. A catalogue entry does not establish that every customer was affected or that every listed data category applied to each person. Compare the record with an official notice addressed to you.

What should you do?

Choose actions that match the information involved. If you find signs that someone is using your identity, the Federal Trade Commission provides a personal recovery plan at IdentityTheft.gov.