Breach date: 2021-08-19. Added to this index: 2023-10-09. Accounts affected: about 28M. Domain: bvdinfo.com.
What happened
In approximately August 2021, hundreds of gigabytes of business data collated from public sources was obtained and later published to a popular hacking forum. Sourced from a customer of Bureau van Dijk's (BvD) "Orbis" product, the corpus of data released contained hundreds of millions of lines about corporations and individuals, including personal information such as names and dates of birth. The data also included 28M unique email addresses along with physical addresses (presumedly corporate locations), phone numbers and job titles. There was no unauthorised access to BvD's systems, nor did the incident expose any of their or parent company's Moody's clients.
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
Dates of birth: Your full birth date, day, month and year, collected at signup for age checks, identity verification, insurance quotes, birthday offers or government services.
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.
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.
Phone numbers: Your mobile or landline number, collected at signup for contact, delivery updates, marketing and two-factor codes.
Physical addresses: Your residential, postal, billing or delivery address, stored by retailers, utilities, banks, government services and almost any company that sends you something.
What to do now
Check whether your own address is in this dataset with the free email breach check.
Review the accounts connected to this service and turn on two-factor authentication.
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 Public Business Data breach?
The Public Business Data breach exposed Dates of birth, Email addresses, Job titles, Names, Phone numbers, Physical addresses. About 28M accounts were affected.
Was I affected by the Public Business Data 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 Public Business Data breach?
Treat any message that quotes details from this breach as suspicious, turn on two-factor authentication, and consider removing your details from people-search sites if your address or phone was included.