Data & Leads Data Breach

What happened

In November 2018, security researcher Bob Diachenko identified an unprotected database believed to be hosted by a data aggregator. Upon further investigation, the data was linked to marketing company Data & Leads. The exposed Elasticsearch instance contained over 44M unique email addresses along with names, IP and physical addresses, phone numbers and employment information. No response was received from Data & Leads when contacted by Bob and their site subsequently went offline.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Watch for targeted phishing emails referencing Data & Leads — 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.
• Check whether your email address appears in this breach on haveibeenpwned.com.