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2021 · Data breach

Luxottica

Breached 16 March 2021 · Published 19 May 2023 · luxottica.com

77,093,812Accounts exposed
77/100Severe severity
6Types of data
VerifiedBy HIBP

On 16 March 2021, Luxottica was breached. 77,093,812 accounts were exposed, including dates of birth, email addresses, genders. MyRecon rates it 77/100 — severe. That is roughly everyone in the United Kingdom.

Checked against this breach and every other on record, against public breach data only. Your address is not sent to us as a form and is not stored — it is handed straight to the lookup tool in your own browser. See the privacy policy.

Two details in this record deserve more attention than the headline number. The first is that it happened through a partner, which meant the 70 million people in the file had no relationship with the company whose name is on it — they bought glasses from a brand Luxottica owns, or had an eye test at an optician it supplies.

The second is the interval. The intrusion dates to March 2021. The data was sold on a hacking forum in late 2022. For roughly eighteen months the exposure existed and there was nothing for anyone in it to read, act on or be notified about. A company's statement that it is "considering other notification obligations" is the sound that gap makes.

Nothing in the exposed fields can be changed. Name, date of birth, address, phone number and gender are the permanent identifiers, and the practical consequence is a phone call, some years later, from somebody who already knows all five.

What happened

In March 2021, the world's largest eyewear company Luxoticca suffered a data breach via one of their partners that exposed the personal information of more than 70M people. The data was subsequently sold via a popular hacking forum in late 2022 and included email and physical addresses, names, genders, dates of birth and phone numbers. In a statement from Luxottica, they advised they were aware of the incident and are currently "considering other notification obligations".

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

What to do if you were in it

  1. Move two-factor authentication off SMS and onto an authenticator app, which a SIM swap cannot intercept.
  2. Be sceptical of post and callers who already know your address — knowing it is no longer evidence of anything.
  3. 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 Luxottica 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 Luxottica breach?

dates of birth, email addresses, genders, names, phone numbers, physical addresses. 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 16 March 2021. It was published to Have I Been Pwned on 19 May 2023, a gap of 795 days during which the data was already out.

Is the Luxottica 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?

77,093,812 accounts. That is roughly everyone in the United Kingdom. That is accounts rather than people — one person often has several.

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Three kinds of content appear on this page and they are kept apart deliberately. The breach description is quoted from Have I Been Pwned under its licence. The severity score, the field-by-field explanation and the advice are computed from the record itself — every sentence derives from a number or a flag in it, which is what stops the analysis drifting from the evidence. Anything under the "MyRecon's take" byline is editorial: our reading of this breach, presented as opinion rather than as a finding.

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