You've Been Scraped 2018 Data Breach
ObscureIQ Breach Intelligence
Low SeverityAggregated / marketing data
You've Been Scraped' LinkedIn Profile Data Aggregation Exposure (2018): 66 Million Professional Profiles Including Job Title & Employer Left in Open Database
Scraped professional profile and contact data.
Verified by ObscureIQ Intelligence
18/100Breach Risk Index
9Data Value
10Market Recency
2771dSince Breach
Breach Intelligence Summary
Entity: You've Been Scraped · Actor: Unknown (data aggregator, unidentified) · Sources: 2 references
Attack: Scraping / Collection
Profile: Synthetic / Scraped Dataset · Scraped professional profile and contact data · LinkedIn-scraped profile corpus · Global
Timeline: Breach (2018-10-05) · Indexed (Dec 06, 2018) · Year (2018)
Exposure: 66.1M records · 6 fields: Email Address, Employer, Full Name, Geographic Location, Job Information, Social Media Profile
Status: Scrape
Executive Summary
In October and November 2018, a researcher discovered several unprotected MongoDB instances, believed hosted by a data aggregator, containing over 66 million records scraped from LinkedIn. The data owner could not be identified. Exposed records included names, work and personal email addresses, job titles, employers, geographic data, and links to LinkedIn profiles. Systems were not breached; the data was scraped and left exposed.
ObscureIQ assessment: High risk of spearphishing, executive targeting, and business relationship mapping. Scraped profile data is especially useful because it is already structured for outreach and impersonation.
Breach Impact
The professional profile data supports targeted spear-phishing, business-email-compromise reconnaissance, and enrichment of other datasets; no credentials were exposed.
About You've Been Scraped
"You've Been Scraped" is not a company but a name given to a set of exposed databases holding professional profile data believed scraped from LinkedIn by an unidentified data aggregator.
Why They Hold Your Data
Scraped professional-profile corpora aggregate names, job titles, employers, contact details, and profile-linked records from professional networking sources into bulk datasets.
Recent Developments
A researcher found the unprotected MongoDB instances in late 2018; the owner of the data was never identified.
Data Points Exposed
6 verified field types
Email Address
Employer
Full Name High
Geographic Location
Job Information
Social Media Profile
Field names are shown in full for clarity and search visibility. Canonical machine keys are emitted only in this page’s structured data.
Exploitation & Downstream Threats
Threat Activity:Low
Primary downstream threats:
- Targeted phishing campaigns using exposed email addresses
- Doxxing risk from physical address exposure
- Employment-based social engineering using job and employer data
- Social media account targeting and impersonation
Threat vectors:
- Phishing, credential stuffing & account takeover
- Business Email Compromise seeding
- Name-based social engineering
- Pattern-of-life analysis & physical surveillance
- Vishing & authority impersonation
- Account impersonation & social graph harvesting
Threat Actor: Unknown (data aggregator, unidentified)
Unknown (data aggregator, unidentified)
Scraping / Collection
Attribution and method are based on available breach intelligence. Reported attack vector: Scraping / Collection.
Recommended Actions
If you believe your information may be included:
Enable MFA Everywhere
Turn on multi-factor authentication on email first, then financial accounts.
Report & Recover
If you spot misuse, start an official recovery plan and report fraud.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened in the You've Been Scraped breach?▾
In October and November 2018, a researcher discovered several unprotected MongoDB instances, believed hosted by a data aggregator, containing over 66 million records scraped from LinkedIn. The data owner could not be identified. Exposed records included names, work and personal email addresses, job…
What data was exposed?▾
Verified fields include Email Address, Employer, Full Name, Geographic Location, Job Information, Social Media Profile.
What should I do if I was affected?▾
Change reused passwords, enable MFA, and (if identity or financial data is involved) freeze your credit and monitor your accounts.
Sources & References
Every claim on this page is traceable. This breach draws on:
Breach Index
ObscureIQ Intelligence
ObscureIQ proprietary analysis
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