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Data breaches → Gab

Was your data in the Gab breach?

2021 · gab.com · ~66,521 accounts exposedCritical severity · 10/10

Gab (gab.com) suffered a data breach in 2021 that exposed around 66,521 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 February 2021, the alt-tech social network service Gab suffered a data breach. The incident exposed almost 70GB of data including 4M user accounts, a small number of private chat logs and a list of public groups and public posts made to the service. Only a small number of accounts included email addresses and / or passwords stored as bcrypt hashes with a total of 66.5k unique email addresses being exposed across the corpus of data.

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 Gab breach exposed and what each item actually enables:

Passwords

Attackers replay leaked passwords across other sites (“credential stuffing”). Because most people reuse passwords, one leak often unlocks email, shopping and banking accounts elsewhere.

Private messages

Personal correspondence can be used for blackmail or social engineering, and often contains other sensitive details you have forgotten sharing.

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: Avatars, Email addresses, Names, Passwords, Private messages, 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.

  1. Passwords: Change this password everywhere you have reused it, starting with your email account — whoever controls your email can reset everything else.
  2. Private messages: Consider what was discussed on this service and whether anything needs changing (shared passwords, personal disclosures).
  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.

How urgent is this now?

This data has been circulating for around 5 years, which means it has been copied, combined with other leaks and indexed by search tools many times over.

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.

Check if your email was exposed.Nullivo's free scan checks your own verified email against known breaches — including Gab — 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 Gab breach?

The Gab breach exposed passwords, private messages, 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 Gab breach?

Around 66,521 accounts were exposed, making it a smaller, more targeted breach.

What should I do if I had a Gab 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 Gab breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.

See all breaches we cover →