high severity November 19, 2016 · 1 min read

RankWatch Data Breach (2016)

If you are a customer of RankWatch, here’s what’s now in circulation.

In approximately November 2016, the search engine optimisation management company RankWatch exposed a Mongo DB with no password publicly whereupon their data was exfiltrated and posted to an online forum. The data contained 7.4 million unique email addresses along with names, employers, phone numbers and job titles in a table called "us_emails". When contacted and advised of the incident, RankWatch would not reveal the purpose of the data, where it had been acquired from and whether the data owners had consented to its collection. The forum which originally posted the data explained it as bein

What the free scan actually returns

Sample resultyou@email.comIllustrative — not a real person

Found on people-search siteswe remove these

These listings are live, public, and legal to remove — and removing them is what we do.

value redacted in this sampleage, relatives, address historySpokeo

value redacted in this samplephone, household, property recordsBeenVerified

value redacted in this sample580 companies checked

Found in breach recordsverifiedreported — unverified

Each record is labeled: confirmed breach data, or an attacker’s claim no one has verified.

verifiedvalue redacted in this samplepassword + phone · 2024telecom breach

unverifiedvalue redacted in this sampleclaimed in ransomware listing · 2026leak-site claim

Leaked data cannot be deleted from the internet — anyone claiming otherwise is lying. Broker listings can be removed. We do the second, and show you exactly what to fix from the first.

Were you a RankWatch customer?

RankWatch is one listing. Your email is probably in others.

7.4M accounts were exposed here. Check whether yours is one — and find every other leak tied to the same address, in about 15 seconds. No account, no card.

Report details & sourcing

Severity High contact details only, none of them permanent

Disclosed November 19, 2016

Last reviewed July 22, 2026

Affected 7.4M

Data exposed Email addressesEmployersJob titlesNamesPhone numbers

By GalaxyWarden Threat Research · Editorial & sourcing standards

Editorial & sourcing policy

GalaxyWarden is a breach-monitoring service and news aggregator. We do not exfiltrate, host, purchase, or redistribute stolen data. Breach information is compiled from publicly accessible sources and threat-intelligence platforms, and is reported as claims attributed to their source. We promptly correct or remove material shown to be inaccurate — see our content & takedown policy or write to support@galaxywarden.com.

Sources: Have I Been Pwned

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