medium severity December 24, 2020 · 1 min read

University of California Data Breach (2020)

If you are a student of University of California, here’s what’s now in circulation.

In December 2020, the University of California suffered a data breach due to vulnerability in in a third-party provider, Accellion. The breach exposed extensive personal data on both students and staff including 547 thousand unique email addresses, names, dates of birth, genders, social security numbers, ethnicities and other academic related data attributes. Further analysis is available in Exploring the Impact of the UC Data Breach. The data was provided to HIBP courtesy of Cyril Gorlla.

University of California Data Breach (2020)

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 sample582 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.

What to do now

Steps that match what this notice says was exposed

Every step below is free and you do it yourself, and none of it depends on University of California.

Freeze your credit — this is the one that matters. A freeze is free, it takes minutes, and it has to be done separately at all three bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. It stops a new account being opened in your name, which is what a Social Security number in the wrong hands is for. You can lift it temporarily whenever you need credit.

One more, whatever was exposed: a breach notice is a favourite disguise for a phishing email. If a message about this arrives, do not use its links — go to the company’s site yourself, or call the number on your statement.

Were you a University of California customer?

University of California is one listing. Your email is probably in others.

547K 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 Medium includes at least one identifier that cannot be reissued

Disclosed December 24, 2020

Last reviewed July 22, 2026

Affected 547K

Data exposed Dates of birthEducation levelsEmail addressesEthnicitiesGendersJob titlesNamesPhone numbers +2 more

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

Related breaches

critical June 29, 2020

University of California Data Breach (2020)

Found on people-search siteswe remove these

Found in breach recordsverifiedreported — unverified

Steps that match what this notice says was exposed

Report details & sourcing

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