Appen Data Breach

What happened

In June 2020, the AI training data company Appen suffered a data breach exposing the details of almost 5.9 million users which were subsequently sold online. Included in the breach were names, email addresses and passwords stored as bcrypt hashes. Some records also contained phone numbers, employers and IP addresses. The data was provided to HIBP by dehashed.com.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your Appen password immediately, and update it anywhere you reused the same password.
• Enable two-factor authentication on the affected account and on your critical services (email, banking).
• Watch for targeted phishing emails referencing Appen — attackers weaponise breach data quickly.
• Stay alert for smishing (SMS phishing) and SIM-swap attempts using your phone number.
• Check whether your email address appears in this breach on haveibeenpwned.com.