MySpace data breach

Breach date: 2008-07-01. Added to this index: 2016-05-31. Accounts affected: about 359M. Domain: myspace.com.

What happened

In approximately 2008, MySpace suffered a data breach that exposed almost 360 million accounts. In May 2016 the data was offered up for sale on the "Real Deal" dark market website and included email addresses, usernames and SHA1 hashes of the first 10 characters of the password converted to lowercase and stored without a salt. The exact breach date is unknown, but analysis of the data suggests it was 8 years before being made public.

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.
  • 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

  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 MySpace breach?

The MySpace breach exposed Email addresses, Passwords, Usernames. About 359M accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the MySpace 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 MySpace 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