Bookchor Data Breach

What happened

In January 2021, the Indian book trading website Bookchor suffered a data breach that exposed half a million customer records. The exposed data included email and IP addresses, names, genders, dates of birth, phone numbers and passwords stored as unsalted MD5 hashes. The data was subsequently traded on a popular hacking forum.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your Bookchor 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 Bookchor — attackers weaponise breach data quickly.
• Stay alert for smishing (SMS phishing) and SIM-swap attempts using your phone number.
• Exposed identity data raises identity-theft risk — consider credit monitoring or a credit freeze.