MyRecon OSINTQuestionPro
Behind the exposed accounts
In May 2022, the survey website QuestionPro was the target of an extortion attempt relating to an alleged data breach .
Follow the story
On 21 May 2022, QuestionPro was breached. 22,229,637 accounts were exposed, including browser user agent details, email addresses, ip addresses. MyRecon rates it 52/100, serious. That is about 82% of the population of Australia.
How the story unfolded
Open a step to read the detail. Missing dates stay unknown.
02Entry point
The published account does not explain the exact way the data was obtained.
03Discovery and disclosure
A separate discovery or company-disclosure date is not established by this feed record.
04Added to the breach catalogue
2022-08-05. This is the catalogue date, not necessarily the disclosure date.
05Reported outcome
22,229,637 accounts are listed in this breach. This is a count of accounts, not necessarily individual people. The reported exposed data includes Browser user agent details, Email addresses, IP addresses, Survey results.
"Survey results" is the quietest data class in this archive and one of the most revealing. People answer surveys candidly precisely because they believe the answers are aggregated and anonymous. Tie those answers back to an email address and an IP address, as this data does, and the assumption that made them candid is the thing that makes the file valuable.
The employee engagement survey, the health questionnaire, the political polling, the customer satisfaction form that asked why you left, all of it is opinion given under an expectation of distance from the person holding it.
Worth noting too how this record's status changed. It sat flagged as unverified because the company would not confirm a breach, and the flag was removed only after people found their own accurate records in it. A company declining to confirm does not make a dataset false, and the verification eventually came from the people in it rather than from the organisation holding it.
The story behind the breach
In May 2022, the survey website QuestionPro was the target of an extortion attempt relating to an alleged data breach . Over 100GB of data containing 22M unique email addresses (some of which appear to be generated by the platform), are alleged to have been extracted from the service along with IP addresses, browser user agents and results relating to surveys.
QuestionPro would not confirm whether a breach had occurred (although they did confirm they were the target of an extortion attempt), so the data was initially flagged as "unverified". Subsequent verification by impacted HIBP subscribers later led to the removal of the unverified flag.
Breach description from Have I Been Pwned, used under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
How did it happen?
The published account does not explain the exact way the data was obtained.
What was the motive?
QuestionPro would not confirm whether a breach had occurred (although they did confirm they were the target of an extortion attempt), so the data was initially flagged as "unverified".
Reported demands or attempts to sell data describe what happened, rather than prove every attacker's intention.
What was the outcome?
22,229,637 accounts are listed in this breach. This is a count of accounts, not necessarily individual people.
The reported exposed data includes Browser user agent details, Email addresses, IP addresses, Survey results.
What was exposed, and why it matters
Browser user agent details
Adds detail to a profile that can be assembled from several breaches at once.
Email addresses
The address becomes a confirmed, active target, expect more phishing, better aimed.
IP addresses
Approximate location at the time of use, and a way to correlate accounts across services.
Survey results
Adds detail to a profile that can be assembled from several breaches at once.
What to do if you were in it
Questions people ask about this breach
Was my email address in the QuestionPro breach?
Use the email box on this page. The result applies only to this incident. If the provider does not cover this breach, we say so. A missing match does not prove you were unaffected.
What data was leaked in the QuestionPro breach?
browser user agent details, email addresses, ip addresses, survey results. Each one is explained above, along with what it means for the person it belongs to.
When did it happen, and when did it become public?
The breach is dated 21 May 2022. It was published to Have I Been Pwned on 5 August 2022, a gap of 76 days during which the data was already out.
Is the QuestionPro breach real?
Yes. Have I Been Pwned lists it as verified, meaning the data was checked against the source rather than taken on trust.
How many people were affected?
22,229,637 accounts. That is about 82% of the population of Australia. That is accounts rather than people, one person often has several.
Read next
Also in the archive
Case Files: how the landmark breaches actually happened →
Three kinds of content appear on this page and they are kept apart deliberately. The breach description is quoted from Have I Been Pwned under its licence. The severity score, the field-by-field explanation and the advice are computed from the record itself, every sentence derives from a number or a flag in it, which is what stops the analysis drifting from the evidence. Anything under the "MyRecon's take" byline is editorial: our reading of this breach, presented as opinion rather than as a finding.