RankWatch Data Breach

What happened

In approximately November 2016, the search engine optimisation management company RankWatch exposed a Mongo DB with no password publicly whereupon their data was exfiltrated and posted to an online forum. The data contained 7.4 million unique email addresses along with names, employers, phone numbers and job titles in a table called "us_emails". When contacted and advised of the incident, RankWatch would not reveal the purpose of the data, where it had been acquired from and whether the data owners had consented to its collection. The forum which originally posted the data explained it as being "in the same vein as the modbsolutions leak", a large list of corporate data allegedly used for spam purposes.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Watch for targeted phishing emails referencing RankWatch — 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.