RankWatch data breach

Breach date: 2016-11-19. Added to this index: 2017-11-03. Accounts affected: about 7.4M. Domain: rankwatch.com.

What happened

In approximately November 2016, the search engine optimisation management company RankWatch exposed a Mongo DB with no password publicly whereupon their data was exfiltrated and posted to an online forum. The data contained 7.4 million unique email addresses along with names, employers, phone numbers and job titles in a table called "us_emails". When contacted and advised of the incident, RankWatch would not reveal the purpose of the data, where it had been acquired from and whether the data owners had consented to its collection. The forum which originally posted the data explained it as being "in the same vein as the modbsolutions leak", a large list of corporate data allegedly used for spam purposes.

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.
  • Employers: The name of the company or organisation you work for, collected by professional networks, job sites, insurers, lenders and many signup forms.
  • 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.

What to do now

  1. Check whether your own address is in this dataset with the free email breach check.
  2. Review the accounts connected to this service and turn on two-factor authentication.
  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 RankWatch breach?

The RankWatch breach exposed Email addresses, Employers, Job titles, Names, Phone numbers. About 7.4M accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the RankWatch 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 RankWatch 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.

Next steps