Data breaches → Home Chef
Was your data in the Home Chef breach?
2020 · homechef.com · ~8,815,692 accounts exposedCritical severity · 10/10
Home Chef (homechef.com) suffered a data breach in 2020 that exposed around 8,815,692 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 early 2020, the food delivery service Home Chef suffered a data breach which was subsequently sold online. The breach exposed the personal information of almost 9 million customers including names, IP addresses, post codes, the last 4 digits of credit card numbers and passwords stored as bcrypt hashes. The data was provided to HIBP by dehashed.com.
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 Home Chef breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Direct financial fraud, plus convincing scam calls that quote your real card or account details to establish trust.
Attackers replay leaked passwords across other sites (“credential stuffing”). Because most people reuse passwords, one leak often unlocks email, shopping and banking accounts elsewhere.
Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.
Reveals where you live, work or travel, which supports both targeted scams and physical-safety risks.
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.
Reveals your approximate location and internet provider, which adds credibility to targeted scams.
What to do if you were affected
These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.
- Payment or bank details: Contact your bank, ask them to monitor or reissue the card, and check statements for small “test” transactions.
- 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.
- 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 breach is over 6 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 Home Chef breach?
The Home Chef breach exposed payment or bank details, passwords, phone numbers, location data, names and usernames, email addresses, ip addresses. Direct financial fraud, plus convincing scam calls that quote your real card or account details to establish trust.
How many people were affected by the Home Chef breach?
Around 8,815,692 accounts were exposed, making it a large breach.
What should I do if I had a Home Chef account?
Contact your bank, ask them to monitor or reissue the card, and check statements for small “test” transactions. 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 Home Chef breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the Wishbone (2020) breach? (2020, ~9,705,172 accounts)
- Was your data in the Wongnai breach? (2020, ~3,924,454 accounts)
- Was your data in the Bonobos breach? (2020, ~2,811,929 accounts)
- Was your data in the IIMJobs breach? (2018, ~4,216,063 accounts)
- Was your data in the CyberServe breach? (2021, ~1,107,034 accounts)
- Was your data in the Eye4Fraud breach? (2023, ~16,000,591 accounts)