Was your data in the Yam 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.
Yam (yam.com) suffered a data breach in 2013 that exposed around 13,258,797 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 June 2013, the Taiwanese website Yam.com suffered a data breach which was shared to a popular hacking forum in 2021. The data included 13 million unique email addresses alongside names, usernames, phone numbers, physical addresses, dates of birth and unsalted MD5 password hashes.
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 Yam breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Also listed in this breach: Dates of birth, Email addresses, Names, Passwords, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, 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.
- 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. - 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. - Names and usernames
Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts. - Confirm you were actually in it
Run a free scan before you spend time on the steps above.
This breach put your details on data-broker sites
Because Yam 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 Yam breach?
The Yam breach exposed passwords, home addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, 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 Yam breach?
Around 13,258,797 accounts were exposed, making it a very large breach by any measure.
What should I do if I had a Yam 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 Yam breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.