past breaches and infostealer logs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI saw thousands of files that included emails, usernames, passwords, and the URL links to the login or authorization for the accounts,\u201d Fowler has confirmed, adding that the database illustrates that cybercriminals themselves are \u201cnot immune to data breaches.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fowler has estimated the number of accounts for major services that had their compromised credentials included in the leaked database, with the most, by a long chalk, seemingly belonging to Gmail users.<\/p>\n
Here are the totals provided by Fowler, in order of volume:<\/p>\n
Gmail – 48 millionFacebook – 17 millionInstagram – 6.5 millionYahoo – 4 millionNetflix – 3.4 millionOutlook – 1.5 million<\/p>\n
The good news is that the database is no longer available online, although it took more than a month for Fowler to get it taken down.<\/p>\n
Matt Conlon, CEO of Cytidel, has called it a treasure trove for anyone with malicious intent. \u201cInfo stealers have seen a significant rise in prevalence over the past few years,\u201d Conlon said, \u201cand a data breach like this highlights just how widespread this issue is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Boris Cipot, a senior security engineer at Black Duck, said that \u201cthere is no way to know how much damage or data leakage occurred before it was removed,\u201d adding that \u201cthe database also contained logins for government, banking, and streaming services, making it a highly valuable target for cybercriminals.\u201d<\/p>\n
I reached out to my contacts at Google and Gmail for a statement and a spokesperson told me: “We are aware of reports regarding a dataset containing a wide range of credentials, including some from Gmail. This data represents a compilation of ‘infostealer\u2019 logs\u2014credentials harvested from personal devices by third-party malware\u2014that have been aggregated over time. We continuously monitor for this type of external activity and have automated protections in place that lock accounts and force password resets when we identify exposed credentials.” <\/p>\n
So, to reiterate, this is not a new breach, it impacts multiple services, and is most likely a compilation of existing compromised credentials. Gmail just happens to be the one that is featured most, by some margin, within it. So don\u2019t panic, but do ensure you have unique passwords and ideally make use of the Google passkey function instead.<\/p>\n
ForbesNew Facebook Warning For 3 Billion Users After Password AttacksBy Davey Winder<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"48 million Gmail login credentials exposed in massive leak. SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images A highly respected veteran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,178966,178965,178961,26111,178962,178960,178964,178963,178967,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-429455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-credentials-leaked","11":"tag-expressvpn","12":"tag-gmail-login","13":"tag-gmail-password","14":"tag-gmail-password-leak","15":"tag-gmailleak","16":"tag-has-gmail-been-hacked","17":"tag-has-my-gmail-password-been-hacked","18":"tag-password","19":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Gmail](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769227458_917_0x0.jpg\")
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