ShareThis sharethis.com ShareThis data breach: what happened and what to do
In July 2018, ShareThis suffered a breach exposing 41 million unique email addresses with names and, in some cases, dates of birth and password hashes. The data surfaced for sale in 2019.
View all 13,115 breaches- Breach date
- 9 Jul 2018
- Affected
- 40,960,499
- Data exposed
- Dates of birth, Email addresses, Names, Passwords
- Verified
- Yes
- Last updated
Source: Have I Been Pwned (CC BY 4.0)
What happened
In July 2018, the social sharing service ShareThis suffered a data breach. Have I Been Pwned says it exposed 41 million unique email addresses alongside names and, in some cases, dates of birth and password hashes. In 2019 the data appeared for sale on a dark web marketplace and then began circulating more widely.
ShareThis told the California Attorney General that it learned of the incident in February 2019 and deactivated accounts tied to the affected email addresses (notice).
What was exposed
Have I Been Pwned lists dates of birth, email addresses, names and passwords. The passwords were hashes, and not every record had one.
What it means for you
Most people never signed up for ShareThis directly: its buttons sit on other websites, so your address may be there without you remembering. Names and emails feed phishing. Where a birthdate is included, scammers can add it to a message to seem legitimate. If you reused a password, change it.
What to do if you were in it
- 1
Change your password, and every place you reused it
Set a new, unique password on any site that shares a password with an old ShareThis account, then change it on any other account that used the same or a similar one. A password manager makes unique passwords easy. Turn on two-factor login wherever it's offered.
- 2
Expect phishing that mentions the breach
Criminals use leaked names and email addresses to write messages that look personal. Don't click links or open attachments in unexpected emails or texts, and go to a company's site directly instead.
- 3
Keep your birthdate out of unexpected conversations
If a message quotes your date of birth, that doesn't prove it's real. Verify by contacting the company through its official site.
- 4
Check whether your email or phone is in this and other breaches
Run a free Serus scan to see which known breaches include your email address or phone number. Serus monitors breach databases and the dark web and alerts you when your details show up in a new leak. It can't remove data that has already leaked, so the steps here still matter.
Frequently asked
Was I affected by the ShareThis breach?
If your email is among the 41 million, you were. Search it on Have I Been Pwned.
What was exposed?
Dates of birth, email addresses, names and passwords as hashes, in some cases.
Should I change my password?
Yes, if you reused a password from a ShareThis account. Use unique passwords and turn on two-factor login.
Sources
Something wrong or out of date? Tell us and we'll re-check it.
