Data breaches → IndiaMART
Was your data in the IndiaMART breach?
2021 · indiamart.com · ~20,154,583 accounts exposedCritical severity · 8/10
IndiaMART (indiamart.com) suffered a data breach in 2021 that exposed around 20,154,583 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 2021, 38 million records from Indian e-commerce company IndiaMART were found being traded on a popular hacking forum. Dated several months earlier, the data included over 20 million unique email addresses alongside names, phone numbers and physical addresses. It's unclear whether IndiaMART intentionally exposed the data attributes as part of the intended design of the platform or whether the data was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability in the service.
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 IndiaMART breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Home addresses feed people-search and data-broker sites, which republish them publicly. They also make phishing far more convincing and, in the worst cases, enable real-world harassment.
Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.
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.
What to do if you were affected
These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.
- Home addresses: Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
- Phone numbers: Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider.
- 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.
This breach put your details on data-broker sites
Because IndiaMART 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 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.
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 IndiaMART breach?
The IndiaMART breach exposed home addresses, phone numbers, names and usernames, email addresses. Home addresses feed people-search and data-broker sites, which republish them publicly. They also make phishing far more convincing and, in the worst cases, enable real-world harassment.
How many people were affected by the IndiaMART breach?
Around 20,154,583 accounts were exposed, making it a very large breach by any measure.
What should I do if I had a IndiaMART account?
Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating. 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 IndiaMART breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the Domino's India breach? (2021, ~22,527,655 accounts)
- Was your data in the Epik breach? (2021, ~15,003,961 accounts)
- Was your data in the Public Business Data breach? (2021, ~27,917,714 accounts)
- Was your data in the AT&T breach? (2021, ~49,102,176 accounts)
- Was your data in the Covve breach? (2020, ~22,802,117 accounts)
- Was your data in the Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail breach? (2021, ~5,470,063 accounts)