Was your data in the Little Monsters breach?

2017 · littlemonsters.com995,698 accountsSeverity 10 / 10 — critical, because passwords and dates of birth leaked

Check whether your email address was in it

Check my exposure

Free. No password — we email you a six-digit code. This breach and every other one your address appears in.

Little Monsters (littlemonsters.com) suffered a data breach in 2017 that exposed around 995,698 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 approximately January 2017, the Lady Gaga fan site known as "Little Monsters" suffered a data breach that impacted 1 million accounts. The data contained usernames, email addresses, dates of birth and bcrypt hashes of passwords.

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 Little Monsters breach exposed and what each item actually enables:

Passwords
weight 10 / 10
Attackers replay leaked passwords across other sites (“credential stuffing”). Because most people reuse passwords, one leak often unlocks email, shopping and banking accounts elsewhere.
Dates of birth
weight 7 / 10
Date of birth is a permanent identifier used to verify identity by phone. Combined with a name and address it is often enough to impersonate you.
Names and usernames
weight 4 / 10
Links this leak to your other accounts — a reused username lets anyone build a profile of you across platforms.
Email addresses
weight 3 / 10
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.

  1. Passwords
    Change this password everywhere you have reused it, starting with your email account — whoever controls your email can reset everything else.
  2. Dates of birth
    Never confirm your date of birth to an inbound caller — hang up and dial the organisation back on a published number.
  3. Names and usernames
    Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts.
  4. Email addresses
    Treat any message referencing this service with suspicion, and never act on links in unexpected emails.
  5. 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 9 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 Little Monsters breach?

The Little Monsters breach exposed passwords, dates of birth, 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 Little Monsters breach?

Around 995,698 accounts were exposed, making it a mid-sized breach.

What should I do if I had a Little Monsters 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 Little Monsters breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.

Was your data in the Warmane breach?2016 · 1,116,256 accounts
Was your data in the ClixSense breach?2016 · 2,424,784 accounts
Was your data in the Funimation breach?2016 · 2,491,103 accounts
Was your data in the Pluto TV breach?2018 · 3,225,080 accounts
Was your data in the DLH.net breach?2016 · 3,264,710 accounts

See all breaches we cover →