MyRecon OSINTWattpad
Behind the exposed accounts
In June 2020, the user-generated stories website Wattpad suffered a huge data breach that exposed almost 270 million records .
Follow the story
On 29 June 2020, Wattpad was breached. 268,765,495 accounts were exposed, including bios, dates of birth, email addresses. MyRecon rates it 85/100, critical. That is roughly everyone in Brazil.
How the story unfolded
Open a step to read the detail. Missing dates stay unknown.
02Entry point
The published account does not explain the exact way the data was obtained.
03Discovery and disclosure
A separate discovery or company-disclosure date is not established by this feed record.
04Added to the breach catalogue
2020-07-19. This is the catalogue date, not necessarily the disclosure date.
05Reported outcome
268,765,495 accounts are listed in this breach. This is a count of accounts, not necessarily individual people. The reported exposed data includes Bios, Dates of birth, Email addresses, Genders, Geographic locations, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, Social media profiles, User website URLs, Usernames.
The passwords were bcrypt hashes, which is the right answer and means the credential risk here is comparatively low. The exposure that matters is everything else, and it is unusually personal for a breach of this size.
Wattpad is a writing community with a young user base, and the file includes bios, dates of birth, genders, geographic locations and links to users' other social profiles. A bio is freely written text in which people describe themselves, often, at that age, more candidly than they would on any form. Combined with a date of birth and a location, it produces a record that identifies a person who was a minor at the time and says something about who they were.
That kind of data does not age out of being sensitive; it just stops being accurate. Anyone who wrote on the platform as a teenager and has since built a separate adult identity should check whether the linked social profiles in this file still connect the two.
The story behind the breach
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.
Breach description from Have I Been Pwned, used under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
How did it happen?
The published account does not explain the exact way the data was obtained.
What was the motive?
The published account does not establish the motive. We cannot tell what the attackers intended from the exposed data alone.
Reported demands or attempts to sell data describe what happened, rather than prove every attacker's intention.
What was the outcome?
268,765,495 accounts are listed in this breach. This is a count of accounts, not necessarily individual people.
The reported exposed data includes Bios, Dates of birth, Email addresses, Genders, Geographic locations, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, Social media profiles, User website URLs, Usernames.
What was exposed, and why it matters
Bios
Self-written detail that often contains far more identifying information than people remember putting there.
Dates of birth
One of the three things call centres ask to verify identity, and it never changes.
Email addresses
The address becomes a confirmed, active target, expect more phishing, better aimed.
Genders
Small on its own; useful to anyone assembling a fuller profile.
Geographic locations
Where the account was used, which narrows a person down further than most people expect.
IP addresses
Approximate location at the time of use, and a way to correlate accounts across services.
Names
Turns an anonymous address into an identified person, which is what makes targeted phishing possible.
Passwords
Anyone reusing this password elsewhere has those accounts exposed too, credential stuffing is automated and tries them all within days.
Social media profiles
Adds detail to a profile that can be assembled from several breaches at once.
User website URLs
Adds detail to a profile that can be assembled from several breaches at once.
Usernames
A handle links this account to every other place the same handle is used.
What to do if you were in it
Questions people ask about this breach
Was my email address in the Wattpad breach?
Use the email box on this page. The result applies only to this incident. If the provider does not cover this breach, we say so. A missing match does not prove you were unaffected.
What data was leaked in the Wattpad breach?
bios, dates of birth, email addresses, genders, geographic locations, ip addresses, names, passwords, social media profiles, user website urls, usernames. 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 29 June 2020. It was published to Have I Been Pwned on 19 July 2020, a gap of 21 days during which the data was already out.
Is the Wattpad 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?
268,765,495 accounts. That is roughly everyone in Brazil. 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.