Data breaches → Duolingo
Was your data in the Duolingo breach?
2023 · duolingo.com · ~2,676,696 accounts exposedLow severity · 3/10
Duolingo (duolingo.com) suffered a data breach in 2023 that exposed around 2,676,696 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 August 2023, 2.6M records of data scraped from Duolingo were broadly distributed on a popular hacking forum. Obtained by enumerating a vulnerable API, the data had earlier appeared for sale in January 2023 and contained email addresses, names, the languages being learned, XP (experience points), and other data related to learning progress on Duolingo. Whilst some of the data attributes are intentionally public, the ability to map private email addresses to them presents an ongoing risk to user privacy.
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 Duolingo breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
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, Names, Spoken languages, 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.
- 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 Duolingo breach?
The Duolingo breach exposed names and usernames, email addresses. Links this leak to your other accounts — a reused username lets anyone build a profile of you across platforms.
How many people were affected by the Duolingo breach?
Around 2,676,696 accounts were exposed, making it a large breach.
What should I do if I had a Duolingo account?
Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts. 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 Duolingo breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the Dragonica Lunaris breach? (2025, ~126,293 accounts)
- Was your data in the Lumin PDF breach? (2019, ~15,453,048 accounts)
- Was your data in the Bell (2017 breach) breach? (2017, ~2,231,256 accounts)
- Was your data in the Nival breach? (2016, ~1,535,473 accounts)
- Was your data in the Deezer breach? (2019, ~229,037,936 accounts)
- Was your data in the Dubsmash breach? (2018, ~161,749,950 accounts)