Taobao data breach

Breach date: 2012-01-01. Added to this index: 2016-10-08. Accounts affected: about 21M. Domain: taobao.com.

What happened

In approximately 2012, it's alleged that the Chinese shopping site known as Taobao suffered a data breach that impacted over 21 million subscribers. Whilst there is evidence that the data is legitimate, due to the difficulty of emphatically verifying the Chinese breach it has been flagged as "unverified". The data in the breach contains email addresses and plain text passwords. Read more about Chinese data breaches in Have I Been Pwned.

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.

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 Taobao breach?

The Taobao breach exposed Email addresses, Passwords. About 21M accounts were affected.

Was I affected by the Taobao 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 Taobao 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