Ancestry data breach

From Breaches, in the HARD wiki · Updated 24 Dec 2017

This article is about the November 2015 breach of Ancestry. For every breach, see Breaches.

Ancestry

The Ancestry data breach exposed 297,806 accounts from ancestry.com in November 2015. The data taken includes passwords and email addresses.^[1]

Have I Been Pwned verified it and added it to its search on 24 Dec 2017, 2 years later. It is the 523rd largest of the 618 breaches in HARD’s list.

What was exposed

Ancestry’s breach included 2 kinds of data. What each lets criminals do:

Data	What it’s used for
Passwords	Criminals try leaked passwords on email, banking and shopping sites, because people reuse them.
Email addresses	Expect scam emails that name the company to look genuine.

Check whether you’re in it.Search your email address on Have I Been Pwned. It tells you which breaches it appears in, Ancestry among them, without showing the data.
Change your Ancestry password.If the account still exists, sign in at Ancestry (ancestry.com) and change it.
Change it anywhere you used the same one.Start with your email, then banking and shopping. Leaked passwords are tried on other sites automatically, within days.
Use a password manager and two-step sign-in.A different password for every site means one breach can’t open the rest. Two-step sign-in stops a leaked password working on its own.
Distrust messages that mention Ancestry.Scammers use breach data to sound genuine. Don’t click links in emails or texts about the breach; go to the site yourself.

7 Nov 2015: the breach, as best it can be dated.
24 Dec 2017: Have I Been Pwned verifies the data and adds it to its search, 2 years later.

Breaches often stay hidden for a long time. Until it came out, people in it had no reason to change anything.

Breaches that leaked the same kinds of data, closest in time:

See Breaches for all 618, and Updates for keeping your devices patched.

^ Troy Hunt. “Ancestry”, Have I Been Pwned, added 24 Dec 2017. Breach data licensed CC BY 4.0.