Read Novel Data Breach

What happened

In May 2019, the Chinese literature website Read Novel allegedly suffered a data breach that exposed 22M unique email addresses. Data also included usernames, genders, phone numbers and passwords stored as salted MD5 hashes. Read more about Chinese data breaches in Have I Been Pwned.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your Read Novel 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 Read Novel — 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.