Verifications.io Data Breach

What happened?

In February 2019, the email address validation service verifications.io suffered a data breach . Discovered by Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia , the breach was due to the data being stored in a MongoDB instance left publicly facing without a password and resulted in 763 million unique email addresses being exposed. Many records within the data also included additional personal attributes such as names, phone numbers, IP addresses, dates of birth and genders. No passwords were included in the data. The Verifications.io website went offline during the disclosure process, although an archived copy remains viewable .

When did it happen?

The breach date in the public record is February 25, 2019. The record was added to the catalogue on March 9, 2019 and last updated there on March 9, 2019.

What information was reported as exposed?

• Dates of birth
• Email addresses
• Employers
• Genders
• Geographic locations
• IP 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 Verifications.io or used verifications.io around February 25, 2019. 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.