Breach date: 2011-06-25. Added to this index: 2014-05-11. Accounts affected: about 192K. Domain: hackforums.net.
What happened
In June 2011, the hacktivist group known as "LulzSec" leaked one final large data breach they titled "50 days of lulz". The compromised data came from sources such as AT&T, Battlefield Heroes and the hackforums.net website. The leaked Hack Forums data included credentials and personal information of nearly 200,000 registered forum users.
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.
Instant messenger identities: Usernames or IDs for messaging services such as Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Signal or Skype, or older services such as ICQ and AIM, stored in profile fields or contact records.
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.
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.
Social connections: Lists of your friends, followers, contacts, groups or professional connections on a social, dating, gaming or networking platform.
Spoken languages: The languages listed on your profile or account settings, collected by dating apps, job sites, travel services and customer support systems.
Time zones: The time zone saved in your account or device settings, used to show times correctly for messages, meetings and notifications.
User website URLs: The personal blog, portfolio, business website or link in bio that you added to a profile, forum account or directory listing.
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 hackforums.net breach?
The hackforums.net breach exposed Dates of birth, Email addresses, Instant messenger identities, IP addresses, Passwords, Social connections, Spoken languages, Time zones, User website URLs, Usernames, Website activity. About 192K accounts were affected.
Was I affected by the hackforums.net 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 hackforums.net 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.