Data breaches → Combolists Posted to Telegram
Was your data in the Combolists Posted to Telegram breach?
2024 · ~361,468,099 accounts exposedCritical severity · 10/10
Combolists Posted to Telegram suffered a data breach in 2024 that exposed around 361,468,099 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 May 2024, 2B rows of data with 361M unique email addresses were collated from malicious Telegram channels. The data contained 122GB across 1.7k files with email addresses, usernames, passwords and in many cases, the website they were entered into. The data appears to have been sourced from a combination of existing combolists and info stealer malware.
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 Combolists Posted to Telegram breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Attackers replay leaked passwords across other sites (“credential stuffing”). Because most people reuse passwords, one leak often unlocks email, shopping and banking accounts elsewhere.
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.
What to do if you were affected
These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.
- Passwords: Change this password everywhere you have reused it, starting with your email account — whoever controls your email can reset everything else.
- 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 2 years, which means it has been copied, combined with other leaks and indexed by search tools many times over.
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 Combolists Posted to Telegram breach?
The Combolists Posted to Telegram breach exposed passwords, 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 Combolists Posted to Telegram breach?
Around 361,468,099 accounts were exposed, making it one of the largest breaches ever recorded.
What should I do if I had a Combolists Posted to Telegram 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 Combolists Posted to Telegram breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the The Post Millennial breach? (2024, ~56,973,345 accounts)
- Was your data in the Internet Archive breach? (2024, ~31,081,179 accounts)
- Was your data in the Zacks (2024) breach? (2024, ~11,994,223 accounts)
- Was your data in the Z-lib breach? (2024, ~9,737,374 accounts)
- Was your data in the BudTrader breach? (2024, ~2,721,185 accounts)
- Was your data in the Wattpad breach? (2020, ~268,765,495 accounts)