Was your data in the Data & Leads breach?

Data & Leads (datanleads.com) suffered a data breach in 2018 that exposed around 44,320,330 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 2018, security researcher Bob Diachenko identified an unprotected database believed to be hosted by a data aggregator. Upon further investigation, the data was linked to marketing company Data & Leads. The exposed Elasticsearch instance contained over 44M unique email addresses along with names, IP and physical addresses, phone numbers and employment information. No response was received from Data & Leads when contacted by Bob and their site subsequently went offline.

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 Data & Leads breach exposed and what each item actually enables:

Also listed in this breach: Email addresses, Employers, IP 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. IP addresses: No direct action needed, but be wary of anyone quoting your location as “proof” of identity.
6. 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 Data & Leads 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 over 8 years old. Old credentials still cause harm — leaked passwords from a decade ago are still tried against new accounts every day.

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

Breaches that exposed similar data

If the Data & Leads breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.

• Was your data in the Verifications.io breach? (2019, ~763,117,241 accounts)
• Was your data in the Adapt breach? (2018, ~9,363,740 accounts)
• Was your data in the Modern Business Solutions breach? (2016, ~58,843,488 accounts)
• Was your data in the Master Deeds breach? (2017, ~2,257,930 accounts)
• Was your data in the AerServ breach? (2018, ~66,308 accounts)
• Was your data in the Capital Economics breach? (2020, ~263,829 accounts)

See all breaches we cover →