Breach date: 2017-05-15. Added to this index: 2017-05-16. Accounts affected: about 2.2M. Domain: bell.ca.
What happened
In May 2017, the Bell telecommunications company in Canada suffered a data breach resulting in the exposure of millions of customer records. The data was consequently leaked online with a message from the attacker stating that they were "releasing a significant portion of Bell.ca's data due to the fact that they have failed to cooperate with us" and included a threat to leak more. The impacted data included over 2 million unique email addresses and 153k survey results dating back to 2011 and 2012. There were also 162 Bell employee records with more comprehensive personal data including names, phone numbers and plain text "passcodes". Bell suffered another breach in 2014 which exposed 40k records.
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.
Geographic locations: A general location recorded on your account, such as a country, state, city, postcode or region, either typed in by you or estimated from your IP address.
IP addresses: The network addresses your devices used when you signed up, logged in or posted, recorded by almost every website in its access logs.
Job titles: Your role or position, such as accounts payable officer, nurse or IT administrator, recorded by professional networks, business software, event registrations and marketing lists.
Names: Your first name, surname and sometimes middle name or initials, as you gave them when you signed up. It appears in almost every breach because nearly every account asks for it.
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.
Phone numbers: Your mobile or landline number, collected at signup for contact, delivery updates, marketing and two-factor codes.
Spoken languages: The languages listed on your profile or account settings, collected by dating apps, job sites, travel services and customer support systems.
Survey results: Your answers to market research, customer feedback, political polls, health questionnaires, workplace surveys or quizzes, sometimes linked to your name or email address.
Usernames: The handle or login name you chose for an account, which may be public on forums, games and social platforms or used privately to sign in.
What to do now
Check whether your own address is in this dataset with the free email breach check.
Change the password on this service and every other site where you used the same password.
Turn on two-factor authentication on your email account first, because it is the reset path for everything else.
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 Bell (2017 breach) breach?
The Bell (2017 breach) breach exposed Email addresses, Geographic locations, IP addresses, Job titles, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers, Spoken languages, Survey results, Usernames. About 2.2M accounts were affected.
Was I affected by the Bell (2017 breach) 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 Bell (2017 breach) 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.