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SHEIN data breach

From Breaches, in the HARD wiki · Updated
This article is about the June 2018 breach of SHEIN. For every breach, see Breaches.

The SHEIN data breach exposed 39,086,762 accounts from shein.com in June 2018. The data taken includes passwords and email addresses.[1]

Have I Been Pwned verified it and added it to its search on 17 Jul 2019, 14 months later. It is the 54th largest of the 618 breaches in HARD’s list.

What was exposed

SHEIN’s breach included 2 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.
Email addressesExpect scam emails that name the company to look genuine.

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, SHEIN among them, without showing the data.
  2. Change your SHEIN password.If the account still exists, sign in at SHEIN (shein.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 SHEIN.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, 14 months later.

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

Still using Shein? Is Shein safe? covers what it collects now, its record since the breach and the settings to change.

Similar breaches

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

  • Dubsmash, December 2018, 162 million accounts
  • MyFitnessPal, February 2018, 144 million accounts
  • Houzz, May 2018, 49 million accounts
  • ShareThis, July 2018, 41 million accounts
  • Chegg, April 2018, 40 million accounts
  • Poshmark, May 2018, 36 million accounts

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

References

  1. ^ Troy Hunt. “SHEIN”, Have I Been Pwned, added 17 Jul 2019. Breach data licensed CC BY 4.0.