Was your data in the Stratfor breach?

Stratfor (stratfor.com) suffered a data breach in 2011 that exposed around 859,777 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 December 2011, "Anonymous" attacked the global intelligence company known as "Stratfor" and consequently disclosed a veritable treasure trove of data including hundreds of gigabytes of email and tens of thousands of credit card details which were promptly used by the attackers to make charitable donations (among other uses). The breach also included 860,000 user accounts complete with email address, time zone, some internal system data and MD5 hashed passwords with no salt.

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 Stratfor breach exposed and what each item actually enables:

Also listed in this breach: Credit cards, Email addresses, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, 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.

1. 01Payment or bank details
   Contact your bank, ask them to monitor or reissue the card, and check statements for small “test” transactions.
2. 02Passwords
   Change this password everywhere you have reused it, starting with your email account — whoever controls your email can reset everything else.
3. 03Home addresses
   Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
4. 04Phone numbers
   Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider.
5. 05Names and usernames
   Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts.
6. 06Confirm 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 Stratfor 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 15 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

Breaches that exposed similar data

If the Stratfor breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.

See all breaches we cover →