Was your data in the Twitter 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.
Twitter (twitter.com) suffered a data breach in 2022 that exposed around 6,682,453 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 January 2022, a vulnerability in Twitter's platform allowed an attacker to build a database of the email addresses and phone numbers of millions of users of the social platform. In a disclosure notice later shared in August 2022, Twitter advised that the vulnerability was related to a bug introduced in June 2021 and that they are directly notifying impacted customers. The impacted data included either email address or phone number alongside other public information including the username, display name, bio, location and profile photo. The data included 6.7M unique email addresses across both active and suspended accounts, the latter appearing in a separate list of 1.4M addresses.
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 Twitter breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Also listed in this breach: Bios, Email addresses, Geographic locations, Names, Phone numbers, Profile photos, 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.
- Phone numbers
Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider. - 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. - Confirm you were actually in it
Run a free scan before you spend time on the steps above.
How urgent is this now?
This data has been circulating for around 4 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 Twitter breach?
The Twitter breach exposed phone numbers, location data, names and usernames, email addresses. Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.
How many people were affected by the Twitter breach?
Around 6,682,453 accounts were exposed, making it a large breach.
What should I do if I had a Twitter account?
Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider. 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 Twitter breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.