Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori data breach

Breach date: 2018-11-03. Added to this index: 2018-11-07. Accounts affected: about 15K. Domain: siae.it.

What happened

In November 2018, the Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers, or SIAE) was hacked, defaced and almost 4GB of data leaked publicly via Twitter. The data included over 14k registered users' names, email addresses and passwords.

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.
  • 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.
  • 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 Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori breach?

The Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori breach exposed Email addresses, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers. About 15K accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori 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 Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori 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