NetGalley Data Breach

What happened

In December 2020, the book promotion site NetGalley suffered a data breach. The incident exposed 1.4 million unique email addresses alongside names, usernames, physical and IP addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and passwords stored as salted SHA-1 hashes.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your NetGalley 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 NetGalley — 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.