Data breaches → Ashley Madison
Was your data in the Ashley Madison breach?
2015 · ashleymadison.com · ~30,811,934 accounts exposedCritical severity · 10/10
Ashley Madison (ashleymadison.com) suffered a data breach in 2015 that exposed around 30,811,934 accounts. If you had an account, some of your personal data may be circulating in leaked databases. The fastest way to know is to check your own email — free, in about 30 seconds, no password required.
What happened
In July 2015, the infidelity website Ashley Madison suffered a serious data breach. The attackers threatened Ashley Madison with the full disclosure of the breach unless the service was shut down. One month later, the database was dumped including more than 30M unique email addresses. This breach has been classed as "sensitive" and is not publicly searchable, although individuals may discover if they've been impacted by registering for notifications. Read about this approach in detail.
Breach details sourced from Have I Been Pwned, the industry-standard breach database. Risk analysis by Nullivo.
What was exposed, and why it matters
Not all breaches carry the same risk — what matters is which fields leaked. Here is what the Ashley Madison breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Attackers replay leaked passwords across other sites (“credential stuffing”). Because most people reuse passwords, one leak often unlocks email, shopping and banking accounts elsewhere.
Direct financial fraud, plus convincing scam calls that quote your real card or account details to establish trust.
Special-category data under UK/EU GDPR. Exposure can lead to discrimination, extortion or targeted harassment, and cannot be undone.
Home addresses feed people-search and data-broker sites, which republish them publicly. They also make phishing far more convincing and, in the worst cases, enable real-world harassment.
Account-recovery answers let an attacker reset your password without ever knowing it — bypassing an otherwise strong password.
Date of birth is a permanent identifier used to verify identity by phone. Combined with a name and address it is often enough to impersonate you.
Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.
Links this leak to your other accounts — a reused username lets anyone build a profile of you across platforms.
Puts you on spam and phishing lists, and confirms to attackers that you hold an account with this service — which makes impersonation emails more believable.
Also listed in this breach: Dates of birth, Email addresses, Ethnicities, Genders, Names, Passwords, Payment histories, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, Security questions and answers, Sexual orientations, Usernames, Website activity.
What to do if you were affected
These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.
- Passwords: Change this password everywhere you have reused it, starting with your email account — whoever controls your email can reset everything else.
- Payment or bank details: Contact your bank, ask them to monitor or reissue the card, and check statements for small “test” transactions.
- Sensitive personal characteristics: Under UK/EU GDPR you have a strong right to erasure here — exercise it with the service and with any site republishing the data.
- Home addresses: Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
- Security questions and answers: Change the answers on every account using them, and treat the answers as passwords (random strings stored in a password manager).
- Check whether your own email appears in this breach — run a free scan to confirm before you spend time on the steps above.
This breach put your details on data-broker sites
Because Ashley Madison exposed sensitive personal characteristics and home addresses, this is one of the breaches that feeds people-search and data-broker sites. Those sites scrape leaked databases, combine them with public records, and republish the result as a searchable profile — which is how a single breach turns into a permanent public listing. Removal works, but brokers typically re-list within about four months, so it has to be repeated.
See our broker-by-broker removal guides →
How urgent is this now?
This breach is over 11 years old. Old credentials still cause harm — leaked passwords from a decade ago are still tried against new accounts every day.
Passwords are the reason breach age matters less than people expect. Leaked credentials are compiled into wordlists that get tried against new services for years afterwards, so a password exposed here is unsafe to use anywhere, ever again.
Remember: a breach can't be "un-leaked" — once a database is out, it exists in countless copies. The goal is to make the leaked data useless: change what can be changed, lock down what can't, and remove what has been republished.
Frequently asked questions
What data was exposed in the Ashley Madison breach?
The Ashley Madison breach exposed passwords, payment or bank details, sensitive personal characteristics, home addresses, security questions and answers, dates of birth, phone numbers, names and usernames, email addresses. Attackers replay leaked passwords across other sites (“credential stuffing”). Because most people reuse passwords, one leak often unlocks email, shopping and banking accounts elsewhere.
How many people were affected by the Ashley Madison breach?
Around 30,811,934 accounts were exposed, making it a very large breach by any measure.
What should I do if I had a Ashley Madison account?
Change this password everywhere you have reused it, starting with your email account — whoever controls your email can reset everything else. You can check whether your own email appears in this breach with a free Nullivo scan — no password required.
Breaches that exposed similar data
If the Ashley Madison breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the ClixSense breach? (2016, ~2,424,784 accounts)
- Was your data in the VNG breach? (2015, ~24,853,850 accounts)
- Was your data in the gPotato breach? (2007, ~2,136,520 accounts)
- Was your data in the Mate1.com breach? (2016, ~27,393,015 accounts)
- Was your data in the Foxy Bingo breach? (2008, ~252,216 accounts)
- Was your data in the Fling breach? (2011, ~40,767,652 accounts)