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Canva data breach

From Breaches, in the HARD wiki · Updated
This article is about the May 2019 breach of Canva. For every breach, see Breaches.

The Canva data breach exposed 137,272,116 accounts from canva.com in May 2019. The data taken includes passwords, usernames, names, email addresses and geographic locations.[1]

Have I Been Pwned verified it and added it to its search on 9 Aug 2019, 3 months later. It is the 16th largest of the 618 breaches in HARD’s list.

What was exposed

Canva’s breach included 5 kinds of data. What each lets criminals do:

DataWhat it’s used for
PasswordsCriminals try leaked passwords on email, banking and shopping sites, because people reuse them.
UsernamesHalf of a login. With a reused password, it opens other accounts.
NamesMakes scam messages personal enough to believe.
Email addressesExpect scam emails that name the company to look genuine.
Geographic locationsRoughly where you live.

What to do

  1. Check whether you’re in it.Search your email address on Have I Been Pwned. It tells you which breaches it appears in, Canva among them, without showing the data.
  2. Change your Canva password.If the account still exists, sign in at Canva (canva.com) and change it.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Distrust messages that mention Canva.Scammers use breach data to sound genuine. Don’t click links in emails or texts about the breach; go to the site yourself.

Timeline

  • : the breach, as best it can be dated.
  • : Have I Been Pwned verifies the data and adds it to its search, 3 months later.

Similar breaches

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

  • ixigo, January 2019, 17 million accounts
  • Lumin PDF, April 2019, 15 million accounts
  • TaiLieu, November 2019, 7.3 million accounts
  • StockX, July 2019, 6.8 million accounts
  • AlpineReplay, August 2019, 898,681 accounts
  • Wattpad, June 2020, 269 million accounts

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

References

  1. ^ Troy Hunt. “Canva”, Have I Been Pwned, added 9 Aug 2019. Breach data licensed CC BY 4.0.