Data breaches → Twitter (200M)
Was your data in the Twitter (200M) breach?
2021 · twitter.com · ~211,524,284 accounts exposedModerate severity · 4/10
Twitter (200M) (twitter.com) suffered a data breach in 2021 that exposed around 211,524,284 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 early 2023, over 200M records scraped from Twitter appeared on a popular hacking forum. The data was obtained sometime in 2021 by abusing an API that enabled email addresses to be resolved to Twitter profiles. The subsequent results were then composed into a corpus of data containing email addresses alongside public Twitter profile information including names, usernames and follower counts.
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 Twitter (200M) breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
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: Email addresses, Names, Social media profiles, 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.
- 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 5 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 (200M) breach?
The Twitter (200M) breach exposed names and usernames, email addresses. Links this leak to your other accounts — a reused username lets anyone build a profile of you across platforms.
How many people were affected by the Twitter (200M) breach?
Around 211,524,284 accounts were exposed, making it one of the largest breaches ever recorded.
What should I do if I had a Twitter (200M) account?
Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts. 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 (200M) breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the Wattpad breach? (2020, ~268,765,495 accounts)
- Was your data in the Mangatoon breach? (2022, ~23,040,238 accounts)
- Was your data in the Wishbone (2020) breach? (2020, ~9,705,172 accounts)
- Was your data in the YouNow breach? (2019, ~18,241,518 accounts)
- Was your data in the ixigo breach? (2019, ~17,204,697 accounts)
- Was your data in the Houzz breach? (2018, ~48,881,308 accounts)