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Data breaches → Charter

Was your data in the Charter breach?

2026 · charter.com · ~4,851,517 accounts exposedCritical severity · 8/10

Charter (charter.com) suffered a data breach in 2026 that exposed around 4,851,517 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 May 2026, the telecommunications company Charter Communications (the parent company behind the consumer broadband and cable brand Spectrum) was named by the ShinyHunters group in a "pay or leak" extortion campaign. The group later published the data, which exposed 4.9M unique email addresses along with names, phone numbers and physical addresses. A subset of approximately 85k records originating from an internal employee directory also included job titles. Charter confirmed the incident, but stated that no sensitive personal information or customer proprietary network information (CPNI) was exfiltrated.

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 Charter breach exposed and what each item actually enables:

Home addresses

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.

Phone numbers

Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.

Names and usernames

Links this leak to your other accounts — a reused username lets anyone build a profile of you across platforms.

Email addresses

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: Email addresses, Job titles, Names, Phone numbers, Physical addresses.

What to do if you were affected

These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.

  1. Home addresses: Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
  2. Phone numbers: Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider.
  3. Names and usernames: Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts.
  4. Email addresses: Treat any message referencing this service with suspicion, and never act on links in unexpected emails.
  5. 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 Charter exposed 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 recent, so the data is actively traded and the risk is at its highest right now.

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.

Check if your email was exposed.Nullivo's free scan checks your own verified email against known breaches — including Charter — in 30 seconds. No password, no signup, and we only ever scan your own email. Run your free scan →

Frequently asked questions

What data was exposed in the Charter breach?

The Charter breach exposed home addresses, phone numbers, names and usernames, email addresses. 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.

How many people were affected by the Charter breach?

Around 4,851,517 accounts were exposed, making it a large breach.

What should I do if I had a Charter account?

Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating. 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 Charter breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.

See all breaches we cover →