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Breach occurred 2017-03-14VerifiedWhat happened
In March 2017, a 27GB database backup file named "Master Deeds" was sent to HIBP by a supporter of the project. Upon detailed analysis later that year, the file was found to contain the personal data of tens of millions of living and deceased South African residents. The data included extensive personal attributes such as names, addresses, ethnicities, genders, birth dates, government issued personal identification numbers and 2.2 million email addresses. At the time of publishing, it's alleged the data was sourced from Dracore Data Sciences (Dracore is yet to publicly confirm or deny the data was sourced from their systems). On 18 October 2017, the file was found to have been published to a publicly accessible web server where it was located at the root of an IP address with directory listing enabled. The file was dated 8 April 2015.
Data exposed
Frequently asked questions
The Master Deeds data breach occurred on March 14, 2017. It was added to Have I Been Pwned's breach catalog on October 18, 2017.
2,257,930 accounts were affected by the Master Deeds data breach, according to Have I Been Pwned's records.
The Master Deeds breach exposed the following data types: Dates of birth, Deceased statuses, Email addresses, Employers, Ethnicities, Genders, Government issued IDs, Home ownership statuses, Job titles, Names, Nationalities, Phone numbers, Physical addresses.
Yes. Have I Been Pwned has verified the Master Deeds breach, meaning there's confirmed evidence the exposed data is genuine and tied to real accounts.
Use KazaSec's free Email Breach Checker (/tools/breach-check) to check whether a specific email address has surfaced in the Master Deeds breach, or any other known breach — the tool never stores what you search.
Our free Email Breach Checker tells you whether a specific email address has surfaced in this breach — or any other known breach — without ever storing what you search.
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