Data breaches → Sphero
Was your data in the Sphero breach?
2023 · sphero.com · ~832,255 accounts exposedHigh severity · 7/10
Sphero (sphero.com) suffered a data breach in 2023 that exposed around 832,255 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 September 2023, over 1M rows of data from the educational robots company Sphero was posted to a popular hacking forum. The data contained 832k unique email addresses alongside names, usernames, dates of birth and geographic locations.
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 Sphero breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
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.
Reveals where you live, work or travel, which supports both targeted scams and physical-safety risks.
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: Dates of birth, Email addresses, Geographic locations, Names, 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.
- Dates of birth: Never confirm your date of birth to an inbound caller — hang up and dial the organisation back on a published number.
- Location data: Review location sharing on the accounts you still hold with this service.
- 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.
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 Sphero breach?
The Sphero breach exposed dates of birth, location data, names and usernames, email addresses. 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.
How many people were affected by the Sphero breach?
Around 832,255 accounts were exposed, making it a mid-sized breach.
What should I do if I had a Sphero account?
Never confirm your date of birth to an inbound caller — hang up and dial the organisation back on a published number. 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 Sphero breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the CyberServe breach? (2021, ~1,107,034 accounts)
- Was your data in the Liker breach? (2021, ~465,141 accounts)
- Was your data in the MeetMindful breach? (2020, ~1,422,717 accounts)
- Was your data in the Flat Earth Sun, Moon and Zodiac App breach? (2024, ~33,294 accounts)
- Was your data in the BtoBet breach? (2019, ~444,241 accounts)
- Was your data in the Wishbone (2020) breach? (2020, ~9,705,172 accounts)