Data breaches → Lanwar
Was your data in the Lanwar breach?
2018 · lanwar.com · ~45,120 accounts exposedCritical severity · 10/10
Lanwar (lanwar.com) suffered a data breach in 2018 that exposed around 45,120 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 July 2018, staff of the Lanwar gaming site discovered a data breach they believe dates back to sometime over the previous several months. The data contained 45k names, email addresses, usernames and plain text passwords. A Lanwar staff member self-submitted the breach to HIBP and has also contacted the relevant authorities about the incident after identifying a phishing attempt to extort Bitcoin from a user.
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 Lanwar breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Attackers replay leaked passwords across other sites (“credential stuffing”). Because most people reuse passwords, one leak often unlocks email, shopping and banking accounts elsewhere.
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.
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.
Also listed in this breach: Email addresses, Names, Passwords, Physical addresses, 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.
- Home addresses: Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
- 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 Lanwar 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.
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 Lanwar breach?
The Lanwar breach exposed passwords, home addresses, 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 Lanwar breach?
Around 45,120 accounts were exposed, making it a smaller, more targeted breach.
What should I do if I had a Lanwar 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 Lanwar breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the The Fly on the Wall breach? (2017, ~84,011 accounts)
- Was your data in the Mortal Online breach? (2018, ~606,637 accounts)
- Was your data in the Hakko Corporation breach? (2019, ~9,665 accounts)
- Was your data in the Thingiverse breach? (2020, ~228,102 accounts)
- Was your data in the MEO breach? (2020, ~8,227 accounts)
- Was your data in the ProctorU breach? (2020, ~444,453 accounts)