Breach date: 2016-09-04. Added to this index: 2016-09-11. Accounts affected: about 2.4M. Domain: clixsense.com.
What happened
In September 2016, the paid-to-click site ClixSense suffered a data breach which exposed 2.4 million subscriber identities. The breached data was then posted online by the attackers who claimed it was a subset of a larger data breach totalling 6.6 million records. The leaked data was extensive and included names, physical, email and IP addresses, genders and birth dates, account balances and passwords stored as plain text.
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
Account balances: The amount of money, credit or stored value recorded against your account at the moment the data was taken. It appears in banking, brokerage, wallet, gaming and loyalty breaches.
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.
Genders: The gender or sex recorded on your profile, usually picked from a list at signup, sometimes with a title such as Mr or Ms or a gender identity option beyond male and female.
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.
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.
Payment histories: A list of past payments linked to your account: dates, amounts, merchants, invoice numbers and sometimes the method used. It is held by billing platforms, subscription services, utilities and payment processors.
Payment methods: The payment options saved to your account: the card brand and last digits, a PayPal or wallet email, direct debit bank details or a buy now pay later link. Some breaches include full card data, others only the type.
Physical addresses: Your residential, postal, billing or delivery address, stored by retailers, utilities, banks, government services and almost any company that sends you something.
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.
Website activity: Records of your actions on a website or app, such as pages viewed, searches, clicks, downloads, logins, cart activity, IP addresses and timestamps.
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 ClixSense breach?
The ClixSense breach exposed Account balances, Dates of birth, Email addresses, Genders, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, Payment histories, Payment methods, Physical addresses, Usernames, Website activity. About 2.4M accounts were affected.
Was I affected by the ClixSense 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 ClixSense 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.