Real Estate Mogul 2016 Data Breach
Financial Services / Real Estate Investment Platform / Property listing and investor marketplace / United States
Real Estate Mogul 2016 Data Breach
Real estate investment website that listed properties and connected buyers with sellers/investors.
Confirmed · ObscureIQ Intelligence
Breach Risk Index i
24/100
Lower riskHigher risk
Lower: limited current risk based on data value and recency.
Data Sensitivity i
StandardExposed data is largely lower-sensitivity. Standard identity-protection precautions are advised.
308KRecords
2016Year
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
In September 2016, a misconfigured MongoDB instance at Real Estate Mogul was accessed and about 5GB of data downloaded, later indexed by Have I Been Pwned. The data contained real-estate listings (including property addresses) and sellers' names, phone numbers and roughly 308,000 unique email addresses. The company stated no account credentials or billing information were included.
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…
308K records analyzed
About Real Estate Mogul
Real Estate Mogul was a real estate investment website that published property listings and connected buyers, sellers and investors, holding seller and listing data for real-estate deal-making.
Why They Hold Your Data
As a real estate listing/investment platform, Real Estate Mogul held seller and listing records including names, phone numbers, email addresses and property/listing addresses; the company stated no account credentials or billing information were in the exposed file.
Recent Developments
In September 2016 a misconfigured MongoDB instance exposed about 5GB of Real Estate Mogul data; the company was advised in September 2018 and said it found no usernames, passwords or billing information in the file. The dataset was indexed by Have I Been Pwned.
Data Points Exposed
4 verified field types
Email Address
Full Name
Phone Number
Physical address High
Breach Impact
The exposure primarily affected property sellers whose contact information was disclosed, creating phishing and unsolicited-contact risk rather than account or financial compromise given the absence of credentials and billing data. It reflects a common cloud-misconfiguration exposure of a listings database.
Exploitation & Downstream Threats
• 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 financial-institution breach: account, wealth or payment data supports direct fraud and highly credible financial-impersonation scams. 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.
- 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).
Protect Yourself
Check If You're Affected
Enter your email to check whether your data appears in this breach. We’ll send a 6-digit code to confirm it’s your address.
Get Free Breach Alerts
Be the first to know when new breaches are disclosed. Free forever — confirm your email with a 6-digit code.
High-Risk? Get an Exposure Audit
Executives, public figures, and high-visibility operators can receive tailored exposure intelligence and hardening guidance.
Request Consultation