Was your data in the GoldSilver breach?

GoldSilver (goldsilver.com) suffered a data breach in 2018 that exposed around 242,715 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 October 2018, the bullion education and dealer services site GoldSilver suffered a data breach that exposed 243k unique email addresses spanning customers and mailing list subscribers. An extensive amount of personal information on customers was obtained including names, addresses, phone numbers, purchases and passwords and answers to security questions stored as MD5 hashes. In a small number of cases, passport, social security numbers and partial credit card data was also exposed. The data breach and source code belonging to GoldSilver was publicly posted on a dark web service where it remained months later. When notified about the incident, GoldSilver advised that "all affected customers have been directly notified".

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 GoldSilver breach exposed and what each item actually enables:

Also listed in this breach: Bank account numbers, Email addresses, IP addresses, Names, Partial credit card data, Passport numbers, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, Purchases, Security questions and answers, Social security numbers.

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. 01Payment or bank details
   Contact your bank, ask them to monitor or reissue the card, and check statements for small “test” transactions.
2. 02Government identifiers
   Consider a credit freeze or fraud alert with the credit reference agencies, and watch for accounts you did not open.
3. 03Home addresses
   Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
4. 04Security questions and answers
   Change the answers on every account using them, and treat the answers as passwords (random strings stored in a password manager).
5. 05Phone numbers
   Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider.
6. 06Confirm you were actually in it
   Run a free scan before you spend time on the steps above.

This breach put your details on data-broker sites

Because GoldSilver 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 GoldSilver breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.

See all breaches we cover →