Emails of nearly 1 billion people leaked in massive data breach

Shutterstock

The emails of nearly 1 billion people were leaked in what experts say is likely the biggest data breach of all time, according to reports.

At least 982 million users’ personal information was exposed during the tech firm Verifications.io’s massive privacy breach late last month, according to Unilad.co.uk.

The leaked data included names, birthdays and addresses along with details about users’ social media accounts and places of employment, the British outlet reported.

It put millions of users at risk of being hacked, spammed and taken advantage of by fraudsters.

An independent cybersecurity consultant, Bob Diachenko, was first to discover the problem in late February while tracking an unsecured 150GB database back to the company’s website.

“This is perhaps the biggest and most comprehensive email database I have ever reported,” he wrote on his blog. “Upon verification I was shocked at the massive number of emails that were publicly accessible for anyone with an internet connection.”

A total of 2 billion records were leaked during the incident, according to the tech news site HackRead.com.

Passwords and credit card details were not compromised, the site reported.

Verifications.io is generally used by marketing companies to check whether material sent in large group emails will bounce back.

Verifications.io’s website went dark after the massive privacy breach and was not up and running Friday. Reps for the firm couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.