Data breach at freelance platform Paidwork impacted over 23m users

The data breach came to light after popular data leaks database Have I Been Pwned listed the cybersecurity incident on July 19. The listing noted that the data breach involving Paidwork affected approximately 23,272,765 users.

 

According to the platform, the data breach occurred in March this year and cyber criminals who breached a Paidwork database offered the 11 GB database for sale on the dark web.

 

Paidwork is an online survey platform that pays users for participating in digital surveys, watching advertisements, playing games, reviewing applications and performing other online tasks like scanning receipts.

 

Have I Been Pwned said the data breach exposed Paidwork users’ names, email addresses, dates of birth and contact information such as phone numbers, physical addresses.

 

The breached database also contained users’ profile pictures, gender, personal interests, passwords, device information, educational levels, and IP addresses. The data breach also compromised users’ bank account information and details of financial transactions.

 

It appears that Paidwork did not engage with the hackers or did not pay a ransom as the stolen database was published online earlier in July. 

 

The data breach was claimed by a threat actor using the pseudonym “hackformetome” who first posted the database on the dark web on April 2, 2026. The database contained more than 23 million unique email addresses and millions of additional personal and financial data records.

 

Paidwork is yet to issue a statement concerning the data breach and how many of its members were impacted. Access to the stolen database may give malicious actors the opportunity to hijack user accounts or target millions of users through social engineering attacks by masquerading as the freelance work platform.