Data breaches → Chess
Was your data in the Chess breach?
2023 · chess.com · ~1,274,077 accounts exposedHigh severity · 6/10
Chess (chess.com) suffered a data breach in 2023 that exposed around 1,274,077 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 November 2023, over 800k user records were scraped from the Chess website and posted to a popular hacking forum. The data included email address, name, username and the geographic location of the user. A further 446k scraped records were later provided and added to HIBP.
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 Chess breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Reveals where you live, work or travel, which supports both targeted scams and physical-safety risks.
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: Email addresses, Geographic locations, Names, Usernames.
What to do if you were affected
These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.
- Location data: Review location sharing on the accounts you still hold with this service.
- Names and usernames: Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts.
- Email addresses: Treat any message referencing this service with suspicion, and never act on links in unexpected emails.
- Check whether your own email appears in this breach — run a free scan to confirm before you spend time on the steps above.
How urgent is this now?
This data has been circulating for around 3 years, which means it has been copied, combined with other leaks and indexed by search tools many times over.
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 Chess breach?
The Chess breach exposed location data, names and usernames, email addresses. Reveals where you live, work or travel, which supports both targeted scams and physical-safety risks.
How many people were affected by the Chess breach?
Around 1,274,077 accounts were exposed, making it a large breach.
What should I do if I had a Chess account?
Review location sharing on the accounts you still hold with this service. 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 Chess breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the Sphero breach? (2023, ~832,255 accounts)
- Was your data in the Tigo breach? (2023, ~700,394 accounts)
- Was your data in the TheGradCafe breach? (2023, ~310,975 accounts)
- Was your data in the Disk Union breach? (2022, ~690,667 accounts)
- Was your data in the CyberServe breach? (2021, ~1,107,034 accounts)
- Was your data in the Twitter breach? (2022, ~6,682,453 accounts)