Data breaches → Vodafone
Was your data in the Vodafone breach?
2013 · vodafone.is · ~56,021 accounts exposedCritical severity · 10/10
Vodafone (vodafone.is) suffered a data breach in 2013 that exposed around 56,021 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 November 2013, Vodafone in Iceland suffered an attack attributed to the Turkish hacker collective "Maxn3y". The data was consequently publicly exposed and included user names, email addresses, social security numbers, SMS message, server logs and passwords from a variety of different internal sources.
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 Vodafone breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Direct financial fraud, plus convincing scam calls that quote your real card or account details to establish trust.
The strongest identity-theft material there is — enough to open credit accounts or file fraudulent claims in your name.
Attackers replay leaked passwords across other sites (“credential stuffing”). Because most people reuse passwords, one leak often unlocks email, shopping and banking accounts elsewhere.
Home addresses feed people-search and data-broker sites, which republish them publicly. They also make phishing far more convincing and, in the worst cases, enable real-world harassment.
Personal correspondence can be used for blackmail or social engineering, and often contains other sensitive details you have forgotten sharing.
Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.
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.
Reveals your approximate location and internet provider, which adds credibility to targeted scams.
Also listed in this breach: Credit cards, Email addresses, Government issued IDs, IP addresses, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, Purchases, SMS messages, 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.
- Payment or bank details: Contact your bank, ask them to monitor or reissue the card, and check statements for small “test” transactions.
- Government identifiers: Consider a credit freeze or fraud alert with the credit reference agencies, and watch for accounts you did not open.
- Passwords: Change this password everywhere you have reused it, starting with your email account — whoever controls your email can reset everything else.
- Home addresses: Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
- Private messages: Consider what was discussed on this service and whether anything needs changing (shared passwords, personal disclosures).
- Check whether your own email appears in this breach — run a free scan to confirm before you spend time on the steps above.
This breach put your details on data-broker sites
Because Vodafone 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 13 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
What data was exposed in the Vodafone breach?
The Vodafone breach exposed payment or bank details, government identifiers, passwords, home addresses, private messages, phone numbers, names and usernames, email addresses, ip addresses. Direct financial fraud, plus convincing scam calls that quote your real card or account details to establish trust.
How many people were affected by the Vodafone breach?
Around 56,021 accounts were exposed, making it a smaller, more targeted breach.
What should I do if I had a Vodafone account?
Contact your bank, ask them to monitor or reissue the card, and check statements for small “test” transactions. 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 Vodafone breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the The Fly on the Wall breach? (2017, ~84,011 accounts)
- Was your data in the pcTattletale breach? (2024, ~138,751 accounts)
- Was your data in the Stratfor breach? (2011, ~859,777 accounts)
- Was your data in the JobStreet breach? (2012, ~3,883,455 accounts)
- Was your data in the HTH Studios breach? (2018, ~411,755 accounts)
- Was your data in the VNG breach? (2015, ~24,853,850 accounts)