Was your data in the MediaWorks 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.
MediaWorks (mediaworks.co.nz) suffered a data breach in 2023 that exposed around 162,710 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 March 2024, millions of rows of data from the New Zealand media company MediaWorks was publicly posted to a popular hacking forum. The incident exposed 163k unique email addresses provided by visitors who filled out online competitions and included names, physical addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, genders and the responses to questions in the competition. Some victims of the breach subsequently received ransom demands requesting payment to have their data deleted.
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 MediaWorks breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Also listed in this breach: Dates of birth, Email addresses, Genders, Phone numbers, Physical addresses.
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. - Dates of birth
Never confirm your date of birth to an inbound caller — hang up and dial the organisation back on a published number. - Phone numbers
Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider. - 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.
This breach put your details on data-broker sites
Because MediaWorks 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 3 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 MediaWorks breach?
The MediaWorks breach exposed home addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, 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 MediaWorks breach?
Around 162,710 accounts were exposed, making it a mid-sized breach.
What should I do if I had a MediaWorks 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 MediaWorks breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.