GoldSilver, a U.S.-based bullion dealer and investment-education company, suffered a data breach disclosed in October 2018 that exposed approximately 243,000 unique email addresses spanning customers and mailing-list subscribers. The breached data, alongside portions of the company's source code, was posted publicly on a dark web service where it remained accessible for months.\n\nThe exposed fields covered names, physical addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, security questions and answers, purchase histories, and passwords stored as MD5 hashes. For a smaller subset of customer records, the breach also exposed Social Security numbers, passport numbers, bank account numbers, and partial credit card data. That subset is the most concerning element of the incident because the combined fields amount to a near-complete identity and financial profile. GoldSilver stated at the time that all affected customers had been directly notified.\n\nFor affected individuals, the practical risk is unusually severe. Bullion customers are an attractive target for both phishing and physical-targeting attempts because purchase histories indicate ownership of high-value portable assets that may be stored at the customer's home. The combination of name, address, and Social Security number is a strong base for identity-fraud and credit-application attacks. Passport and bank account exposure extend the risk into international identity fraud and direct financial theft. Affected customers should treat their identity data as durably compromised, freeze credit at all three U.S. bureaus, monitor financial accounts closely, and maintain heightened awareness of any unsolicited contact referencing precious-metals holdings or storage.

Bullion retailers collect customer identity, addresses, payment-adjacent records, order history, and precious-metals purchase data across direct-to-consumer commerce workflows.

GoldSilver has continued to operate as a bullion dealer and educational publisher in the years since the 2018 incident, with founder Mike Maloney remaining a publicly active figure in the precious-metals media space. The company has not been publicly named in any further large-scale breach disclosures. The 2018 dataset was indexed by Have I Been Pwned in late December 2018 and continues to be referenced in breach-tracking services. A sustained rise in gold prices through 2025 and into 2026 has expanded the bullion-dealer customer base, which adds urgency to any historical exposure of customer purchase records.