Reincubate reincubate.com Reincubate data breach: what happened and what to do
Reviewed by Anthon Wansland
Head of Product & Co-Founder
Serus is a privacy company with paid tools to find and remove your personal data. This page is free and based on official sources.
In October 2020, app data company Reincubate disclosed that a backup from November 2017 was exposed. About 616,000 email addresses, names and passwords (PBKDF2 hashes) were in the data.
View all 13,118 breaches- Breach date
- 11 May 2017
- Affected
- 616,146
- Data exposed
- Email addresses, Names, Passwords
- Verified
- Yes
- Last updated
Source: Have I Been Pwned (CC BY 4.0)
What happened
Reincubate makes phone data and camera apps. Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) dates the breach to 11 May 2017 and added it on 29 October 2020. The exposed data was a backup from November 2017, and the newest record appeared several months earlier.
Reincubate says it received an anonymous extortion email on 18 October 2020, reported the incident to the UK's data regulator, the ICO, and would not pay. In its incident post the company says the backup, not its live systems, was the source, that accounts created after the backup were not affected, and that it reset user passwords.
Sources checked: haveibeenpwned.com, reincubate.com
Last verified against the official page:
What was exposed
HIBP lists email addresses, names and passwords, over 616,000 in all. The passwords were stored as PBKDF2 hashes, a slow method designed to resist cracking.
What it lets criminals do
Email addresses and names feed phishing. Strong passwords behind PBKDF2 are hard to crack, but weak or reused ones can fall, and a password you used here may work elsewhere.
What to do
Change any password you reused from your Reincubate account and watch for phishing that uses your name.
What to do if you were in it
- 1
Change your password, and any you reused
If you used your Reincubate password anywhere else, change it there too. A password manager makes unique passwords easy. Turn on two-factor login where you can.
- 2
Expect phishing that mentions the breach
Treat emails, texts and calls that quote your name, phone number or address as suspect. Don't click links in them; go to the company's site yourself.
- 3
Check whether your email or phone is in this and other breaches
Run a free Serus scan. Serus monitors breach databases and the dark web and alerts you when your details show up in a new leak.
Timeline
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The breach happened
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Added to Have I Been Pwned
Frequently asked
Was I affected by the Reincubate breach?
Look up your email on Have I Been Pwned or run a free Serus scan. HIBP lists over 616,000 unique email addresses.
What was exposed?
Email addresses, names and passwords stored as PBKDF2 hashes.
Should I change my password?
Yes, if you reused your Reincubate password anywhere. Use a unique password on each site and turn on two-factor login.
Sources
- Have I Been Pwned: Reincubate
- Have I Been Pwned: Reincubate Data Breach · haveibeenpwned.com
- Security incident, October 2020 · reincubate.com
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