MediaWorks Data Breach

What happened

In March 2024, millions of rows of data from the New Zealand media company MediaWorks was publicly posted to a popular hacking forum. The incident exposed 163k unique email addresses provided by visitors who filled out online competitions and included names, physical addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, genders and the responses to questions in the competition. Some victims of the breach subsequently received ransom demands requesting payment to have their data deleted.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Watch for targeted phishing emails referencing MediaWorks — 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.