Data breaches → WIRED
Was your data in the WIRED breach?
2025 · wired.com · ~2,364,431 accounts exposedCritical severity · 9/10
WIRED (wired.com) suffered a data breach in 2025 that exposed around 2,364,431 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 2025, 2.3M records of WIRED magazine users allegedly obtained from parent company Condé Nast were published online. The most recent data dated back to the previous September and exposed email addresses and display names, as well as, for a small number of users, their name, phone number, date of birth, gender, and geographic location or full physical address. The WIRED data allegedly represents a subset of Condé Nast brands the hacker also claims to have obtained.
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 WIRED breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
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.
Date of birth is a permanent identifier used to verify identity by phone. Combined with a name and address it is often enough to impersonate you.
Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.
Reveals where you live, work or travel, which supports both targeted scams and physical-safety risks.
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: Dates of birth, Display names, Email addresses, Genders, Geographic locations, Names, Phone numbers, Physical addresses.
What to do if you were affected
These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.
- Home addresses: Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
- Dates of birth: Never confirm your date of birth to an inbound caller — hang up and dial the organisation back on a published number.
- 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.
- 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 WIRED 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 recent, so the data is actively traded and the risk is at its highest right now.
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 WIRED breach?
The WIRED breach exposed home addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, location data, names and usernames, email addresses. 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.
How many people were affected by the WIRED breach?
Around 2,364,431 accounts were exposed, making it a large breach.
What should I do if I had a WIRED account?
Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating. 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 WIRED breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the Allianz Life breach? (2025, ~1,115,061 accounts)
- Was your data in the Miljödata breach? (2025, ~870,108 accounts)
- Was your data in the Verifications.io breach? (2019, ~763,117,241 accounts)
- Was your data in the Moody Bible Institute breach? (2026, ~2,303,416 accounts)
- Was your data in the DentaQuest breach? (2026, ~2,553,599 accounts)
- Was your data in the Betterment breach? (2026, ~1,435,174 accounts)