Data breaches → Paddy Power
Was your data in the Paddy Power breach?
2010 · paddypower.com · ~590,954 accounts exposedCritical severity · 9/10
Paddy Power (paddypower.com) suffered a data breach in 2010 that exposed around 590,954 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 October 2010, the Irish bookmaker Paddy Power suffered a data breach that exposed 750,000 customer records with nearly 600,000 unique email addresses. The breach was not disclosed until July 2014 and contained extensive personal information including names, addresses, phone numbers and plain text security questions and answers.
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 Paddy Power 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.
Account-recovery answers let an attacker reset your password without ever knowing it — bypassing an otherwise strong password.
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.
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.
Reveals your approximate location and internet provider, which adds credibility to targeted scams.
Also listed in this breach: Account balances, Dates of birth, Email addresses, IP addresses, Names, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, Security questions and answers, Usernames, Website activity.
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.
- Security questions and answers: Change the answers on every account using them, and treat the answers as passwords (random strings stored in a password manager).
- 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.
- Names and usernames: Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts.
- 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 Paddy Power 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 16 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 Paddy Power breach?
The Paddy Power breach exposed home addresses, security questions and answers, dates of birth, phone numbers, names and usernames, email addresses, ip 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 Paddy Power breach?
Around 590,954 accounts were exposed, making it a mid-sized breach.
What should I do if I had a Paddy Power 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 Paddy Power breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the Neteller breach? (2010, ~3,619,948 accounts)
- Was your data in the Foxy Bingo breach? (2008, ~252,216 accounts)
- Was your data in the gPotato breach? (2007, ~2,136,520 accounts)
- Was your data in the ClixSense breach? (2016, ~2,424,784 accounts)
- Was your data in the Ashley Madison breach? (2015, ~30,811,934 accounts)
- Was your data in the Health Now Networks breach? (2017, ~321,920 accounts)