Wattpad Data Breach

What happened

In June 2020, the user-generated stories website Wattpad suffered a huge data breach that exposed almost 270 million records. The data was initially sold then published on a public hacking forum where it was broadly shared. The incident exposed extensive personal information including names and usernames, email and IP addresses, genders, birth dates and passwords stored as bcrypt hashes.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your Wattpad 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 Wattpad — attackers weaponise breach data quickly.
• 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.