Baby Names data breach

Breach date: 2008-10-24. Added to this index: 2018-10-24. Accounts affected: about 847K. Domain: babynames.com.

What happened

In approximately 2008, the site to help parents name their children known as Baby Names suffered a data breach. The incident exposed 846k email addresses and passwords stored as salted MD5 hashes. When contacted in October 2018, Baby Names advised that "the breach happened at least ten years ago" and that members were notified at the time.

Breach data sourced from Have I Been Pwned, used under CC BY 4.0. Additional breach metadata provided by XposedOrNot. DataExposed is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by either.

What was exposed

  • Email addresses: The email address you used to register or log in. It is the most common field in breaches because it doubles as your username on most sites.
  • Passwords: The secret you use to sign in, stored by the breached service either in plain text, in a scrambled form called a hash, or encrypted. How it was stored decides how quickly it can be recovered.

What to do now

  1. Check whether your own address is in this dataset with the free email breach check.
  2. Change the password on this service and every other site where you used the same password.
  3. Turn on two-factor authentication on your email account first, because it is the reset path for everything else.
  4. Treat calls and messages that quote real details about you as hostile until you verify them another way.

Frequently asked questions

What data was leaked in the Baby Names breach?

The Baby Names breach exposed Email addresses, Passwords. About 847K accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the Baby Names breach?

Run the free email breach check with the address you used on that service. It will tell you whether your address appears in this dataset.

What should I do about the Baby Names breach?

Change the password on that account and everywhere you reused it, then turn on two-factor authentication. Passwords from this breach are traded and tried automatically against other sites.

Next steps