Was your data in the LimeLeads breach?
Check whether your email address was in it
Check my exposureFree. No password — we email you a six-digit code. This breach and every other one your address appears in.
LimeLeads (limeleads.com) suffered a data breach in 2019 that exposed around 17,838,396 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 2019, the now-defunct B2B marketing leads database service LimeLeads suffered a data breach due to an exposed, unsecured Elasticsearch server. The incident exposed tens of millions of records of largely corporate contact data containing 17.8M unique email addresses, along with phone numbers, employers, job titles and geographic locations including state, city and postcode.
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 LimeLeads breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Also listed in this breach: Email addresses, Employers, Geographic locations, Job titles, Phone 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.
- 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. - Email addresses
Treat any message referencing this service with suspicion, and never act on links in unexpected emails. - Confirm you were actually in it
Run a free scan before you spend time on the steps above.
How urgent is this now?
This breach is over 7 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
What data was exposed in the LimeLeads breach?
The LimeLeads breach exposed phone numbers, location data, email addresses. Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.
How many people were affected by the LimeLeads breach?
Around 17,838,396 accounts were exposed, making it a very large breach by any measure.
What should I do if I had a LimeLeads account?
Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider. 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 LimeLeads breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.