ShareThis data breach
From Breaches, in the HARD wiki · Updated
This article is about the July 2018 breach of ShareThis. For every breach, see Breaches.
The ShareThis data breach exposed 40,960,499 accounts from sharethis.com in July 2018. The data taken includes passwords, dates of birth, names and email addresses.[1]
Have I Been Pwned verified it and added it to its search on 3 Mar 2019, 8 months later. It is the 52nd largest of the 618 breaches in HARD’s list.
What was exposed
ShareThis’s breach included 4 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. |
| Dates of birth | Used to prove who you are to banks and phone companies. |
| Names | Makes scam messages personal enough to believe. |
| Email addresses | Expect scam emails that name the company to look genuine. |
What to do
- Check whether you’re in it.Search your email address on Have I Been Pwned. It tells you which breaches it appears in, ShareThis among them, without showing the data.
- Change your ShareThis password.If the account still exists, sign in at ShareThis (sharethis.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 ShareThis.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, 8 months later.
- : the entry was last updated.
Similar breaches
Breaches that leaked the same kinds of data, closest in time:
- HauteLook, August 2018, 29 million accounts
- Animoto, July 2018, 22 million accounts
- 500px, July 2018, 15 million accounts
- Pluto TV, October 2018, 3.2 million accounts
- Fashion Nexus, July 2018, 1.3 million accounts
- TaiLieu, November 2019, 7.3 million accounts
See Breaches for all 618, and Updates for keeping your devices patched.
References
- ^ Troy Hunt. “ShareThis”, Have I Been Pwned, added 3 Mar 2019. Breach data licensed CC BY 4.0.
External links
- Have I Been Pwned, to check your email address
- sharethis.com, ShareThis’s website