Paidwork data breach

Breach date: 2026-03-29. Added to this index: 2026-07-19. Accounts affected: about 23M. Domain: paidwork.com.

What happened

In March 2026, hackers claimed they had obtained data from the gig economy platform Paidwork which they then listed for sale. Almost 11GB of data allegedly obtained from the platform was subsequently posted publicly in July and contained over 23M unique email addresses. The breach also included a broad range of other data relating to the operation of the platform including user profile data, banking information, payout history for workers and passwords stored as bcrypt hashes.

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

  • Bank account numbers: The number that identifies your account at a bank, usually stored with a sort code, routing number or BSB so a payment can be made or collected.
  • 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.
  • Device information: Technical details an app or website recorded about your device: make and model, operating system version, screen size, language, carrier, and sometimes the device name or advertising ID.
  • Education levels: Your highest qualification, such as high school, a trade certificate, a bachelor's degree or a postgraduate degree, collected by job sites, surveys, dating apps and marketing databases.
  • 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.
  • Financial transactions: Records of payments into and out of your accounts: dates, amounts, merchants, payees, references and sometimes locations, held by banks, payment apps, accounting software and budgeting tools.
  • 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.
  • Personal interests: Hobbies, topics and preferences you selected or that a service inferred about you, such as fishing, investing, gaming, travel or particular causes, stored for matching or advertising.
  • Phone numbers: Your mobile or landline number, collected at signup for contact, delivery updates, marketing and two-factor codes.

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 Paidwork breach?

The Paidwork breach exposed Bank account numbers, Dates of birth, Device information, Education levels, Email addresses, Financial transactions, Genders, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, Personal interests, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, Profile photos. About 23M accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the Paidwork 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 Paidwork 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