Instant Checkmate Data Breach

What happened

In 2019, the public records search service Instant Checkmate suffered a data breach that later came to light in early 2023. The data included almost 12M unique customer email addresses, names, phone numbers and passwords stored as scrypt hashes.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your Instant Checkmate 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 Instant Checkmate — 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.