ClearVoice Surveys 2015 Data Breach
Platform · Market research and consumer survey services · Survey and market research platform · USA
ClearVoice Surveys Market Research Platform Breach (2015, Disclosed 2021): 17.6 Million Consumer Records Including DOB, Home Address & Passwords Exposed
Online survey and market research platform.
Confirmed · ObscureIQ Intelligence
Breach Risk Index i
34/100
Lower riskHigher risk
Moderate: notable exposure with meaningful misuse potential.
Data Sensitivity i
StandardExposed data is largely lower-sensitivity. Standard identity-protection precautions are advised.
17.6MRecords
2015Year
The Breach Risk Index (BRI) is a proprietary 0–100 score rating how dangerous a breach is right now, based on how recently the data has been circulating on the dark web and how valuable it is to attackers.
Crucial data exposed
AddressPhysical address
Breach Summary
ClearVoice Surveys, an online market research platform holding personal data on millions of survey panelists, suffered a breach when a 2015 database backup was taken and redistributed on a public hacking forum in April 2021. The exposure was the result of a misconfiguration that left the backup accessible. The company confirmed the breach and acknowledged the data was authentic. The leaked dataset contained more than 17 million rows of records, including approximately 15 million unique email addresses. The exposed data included names, email addresses, dates of birth, genders, phone numbers, physical addresses, IP addresses, and passwords stored in plain text. Plain text passwords are particularly dangerous because they can be used directly to access other accounts where people reuse the same credentials. The demographic depth of the records, combined with the nature of the platform, means the data could also reveal sensitive personal characteristics depending on which survey topics individuals had participated in, including health, financial, or political subjects. No settlement or regulatory enforcement action specific to this breach has been prominently documented. The six-year gap between the original data collection and its public exposure is a common pattern with stolen backup files, which often circulate privately before broader publication. Affected individuals face ongoing risks of phishing, credential stuffing, identity fraud, and targeted profiling based on the personal details exposed.
Full threat analysis, exploitation vectors, and principal guidance below.
10 additional sections · verified field analysis · defensive doctrine
Querying breach corpus…
Cross-referencing exposed field types…
Resolving threat-actor attribution…
Compiling principal risk advisory…
17.6M records analyzed
About ClearVoice Surveys
ClearVoice Surveys is an online survey and market research platform that recruits consumer panelists to complete surveys in exchange for compensation. The company operates as a market research data collection service, holding personal profile information on millions of survey participants. It serves clients in consumer insights, advertising research, and market analysis.
Why They Hold Your Data
Survey and market-research platforms collect respondent identity, contact details, survey responses, panel participation history, and incentive or payment records across research workflows.
Recent Developments
ClearVoice Surveys continues to operate as a survey panel and market research platform. No major organizational changes have been publicly reported in the period surrounding or following the breach.
Data Points Exposed
8 verified field types
Date of Birth High
Email Address
Full Name
Gender
IP Address
Password High
Phone Number
Physical address High
Breach Impact
In April 2021 a database backup from ClearVoice Surveys dating to 2015 was exposed and shared on a hacking forum. The company acknowledged the breach and confirmed the data was authentic. The exposed dataset contained approximately 17.6 million records including names, email addresses, dates of birth, genders, IP addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, and passwords. The six-year gap between the data's creation and its public exposure reflects the common pattern of stolen backup files circulating privately before broader publication. No settlement or regulatory enforcement action specific to this incident has been prominently documented.
Exploitation & Downstream Threats
• Credential stuffing against reused passwords across other platforms | • Identity verification bypass using name + date of birth combination | • SIM swap attacks where phone numbers are present | • Targeted phishing campaigns using exposed email addresses | • Doxxing risk from physical address exposure
Principal Risk Advisory
What this means for a principal
A consumer-service breach: contact and account data supports phishing, account takeover and profile enrichment. For a high-profile principal this is targeting-grade, not merely identity-theft-grade: the combination lets an adversary locate, impersonate, or pressure the principal with little additional work.
What You Should Do
- Treat the home address as exposed: review mail and package handling and physical-security routines, and brief household staff to verify unusual requests.
- Reset any reused passwords and enable MFA on email first, then financial accounts.
- Guard against SIM-swap and vishing: add a carrier port-out PIN and verify any 'support' calls independently.
- Do not use unofficial 'am I affected' lookups; several are themselves harvesting operations.
How ObscureIQ Can Help
- Corpus confirmation: determine whether and where the principal (plus household and staff) appear in this dataset and which specific fields are exposed for them.
- Exposure mapping and footprint neutralization: cross-reference against broker-available data and suppress still-removable elements, prioritizing address and phone, since this record re-seeds broker networks.
- ThreatWatch tuned to this incident's identifiers and misuse pattern (impersonation and targeting patterns, not generic credential monitoring).
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