Data breach
Twitter data breach
In 2021, Twitter suffered a data breach affecting 400,438,631 records. Exposed data included email addresses, names, surname and 1 other type of data.
Breach date
400.4 million
Records in the breach
4
Types of data exposed
Were you affected by the Twitter breach?
Enter your email address to see whether it appears in this breach — or any of the other breaches in Leak Database.
Data exposed in the Twitter breach
- Email Addresses
- Names
- Surname
- Display Names
About the breach
The Twitter 200M Data Breach originated from an API vulnerability exploited around June 2021 (and patched in January 2022) that allowed malicious actors to scrape and compile over 200 million user records.
Key Details
• Scope of Impact: Approximately 209.5 million to 230 million records were exposed, including email addresses, phone numbers, screen names, and real names.
• Exposed vs. Safe Data: Public profile information, emails, and phone numbers were leaked, no passwords were exposed.
• Cause: An API flaw allowed automated scripts to input phone numbers or email addresses and map them back to specific Twitter usernames.
• Public Disclosure: The scraped data set surfaced widely on hacking forums through late 2022 and early 2023.
• Primary Risks: Increased vulnerability to targeted phishing, spam, identity exposure of pseudonymous accounts, and doxxing.
Key Details
• Scope of Impact: Approximately 209.5 million to 230 million records were exposed, including email addresses, phone numbers, screen names, and real names.
• Exposed vs. Safe Data: Public profile information, emails, and phone numbers were leaked, no passwords were exposed.
• Cause: An API flaw allowed automated scripts to input phone numbers or email addresses and map them back to specific Twitter usernames.
• Public Disclosure: The scraped data set surfaced widely on hacking forums through late 2022 and early 2023.
• Primary Risks: Increased vulnerability to targeted phishing, spam, identity exposure of pseudonymous accounts, and doxxing.
How to protect yourself
In order to protect yourself, we recommend the following:
1. Change your password on all website, especially where you re-use old passwords.
2. Install Google and Microsoft Authenticator on your mobile device and activate 2FA on all websites supporting it.
1. Change your password on all website, especially where you re-use old passwords.
2. Install Google and Microsoft Authenticator on your mobile device and activate 2FA on all websites supporting it.
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