Was your data in the Elance breach?
Check whether your email address was in it
Check my exposureFree. No password — we email you a six-digit code. This breach and every other one your address appears in.
Elance (elance.com) suffered a data breach in 2009 that exposed around 1,291,178 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
Sometime in 2009, staffing platform Elance suffered a data breach that impacted 1.3 million accounts. Appearing online 8 years later, the data contained usernames, email addresses, phone numbers and SHA1 hashes of passwords, amongst other personal data.
Breach record from Have I Been Pwned, CC BY 4.0. 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 Elance breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Also listed in this breach: Email addresses, Employers, Geographic locations, Passwords, Phone numbers, 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.
- Passwords
Change this password everywhere you have reused it, starting with your email account — whoever controls your email can reset everything else. - Phone numbers
Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider. - 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. - Confirm you were actually in it
Run a free scan before you spend time on the steps above.
How urgent is this now?
This breach is over 17 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 Elance breach?
The Elance breach exposed passwords, phone numbers, location data, 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 Elance breach?
Around 1,291,178 accounts were exposed, making it a large breach.
What should I do if I had a Elance 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 Elance breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.