MyRecon OSINT
DemandScience by Pure Incubation
On 28 February 2024, DemandScience by Pure Incubation was breached. 121,796,165 accounts were exposed, including email addresses, employers, job titles. MyRecon rates it 78/100 — severe. That is roughly everyone in Germany.
What happened
In early 2024, a large corpus of data from DemandScience (a company owned by Pure Incubation), appeared for sale on a popular hacking forum. Later attributed to a leak from a decommissioned legacy system, the breach contained extensive data that was largely business contact information aggregated from public sources. Specifically, the data included 122M unique corporate email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, employers and job titles. It also included names and for many individuals, a link to their LinkedIn profile.
Breach description from Have I Been Pwned, used under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
Who was behind it
No party has been publicly confirmed as responsible, and this page will not name one. Most breaches are never formally attributed: data surfaces on a forum or inside a combined dump long after the intrusion, and the trail back to a specific actor is rarely made public. Where a group has claimed responsibility it is usually named in the account above — that claim is theirs, not a finding of ours.
What was exposed, and why it matters
- Email addressesThe address becomes a confirmed, active target — expect more phishing, better aimed.
- EmployersConnects a personal account to a workplace, which is how attackers pivot from a person to a company.
- Job titlesIdentifies who has access to what, which is how targets for business email compromise are picked.
- NamesTurns an anonymous address into an identified person, which is what makes targeted phishing possible.
- Phone numbersEnables SIM-swap attacks against SMS two-factor codes, and puts the number on scam-call lists indefinitely.
- Physical addressesWhere someone actually lives. Combined with a name this moves the risk off the internet.
- Social media profilesAdds detail to a profile that can be assembled from several breaches at once.
What to do if you were in it
- Move two-factor authentication off SMS and onto an authenticator app, which a SIM swap cannot intercept.
- Be sceptical of post and callers who already know your address — knowing it is no longer evidence of anything.
- Expect better-aimed phishing. A message that already knows your name and where you have an account is the whole point of a breach like this.
Questions people ask about this breach
Was my email address in the DemandScience by Pure Incubation breach?
Enter it in the box at the top of this page. MyRecon checks it against this breach and every other one on record, and the address is never stored.
What data was leaked in the DemandScience by Pure Incubation breach?
email addresses, employers, job titles, names, phone numbers, physical addresses, social media profiles. Each one is explained above, along with what it means for the person it belongs to.
When did it happen, and when did it become public?
The breach is dated 28 February 2024. It was published to Have I Been Pwned on 13 November 2024, a gap of 259 days during which the data was already out.
Is the DemandScience by Pure Incubation breach real?
Yes. Have I Been Pwned lists it as verified, meaning the data was checked against the source rather than taken on trust.
How many people were affected?
121,796,165 accounts. That is roughly everyone in Germany. That is accounts rather than people — one person often has several.
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Severity is scored by MyRecon from the number of accounts, the sensitivity of the specific fields exposed, and whether the breach is confirmed — not by a language model. The description above is quoted from Have I Been Pwned; the analysis around it is ours.