The data of almost 250 million user accounts of the French music streaming platform Deezer have surfaced in forums dealing with personal data in recent weeks, several websites specializing in data leaks have reported.
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Deezer said on Tuesday it was informed that data stolen in 2019 “by one (of its) previous service providers” had been exposed online.
“The data disclosed includes basic information such as first and last name, date of birth, email address,” Deezer said, but “does not contain any passwords or payment information.”
Deezer declined to confirm the number of affected user accounts.
But according to the stolen data tracker Damien Bancal, author of the specialized blog Zataz.com, the data of 257 million users was put online, representing more than 260 GB (gigabytes) of information.
For its part, the American website restoreprivacy.org, which mentioned the case in November, said it had identified “more than 240 million” affected accounts.
Deezer warned the CNIL, the French guardian of digital privacy, in November and has been working with them “in close collaboration since”.
In agreement with the CNIL, “we are in the process of contacting the affected users by email to make them aware of the risks of phishing (phishing) and to encourage them to be vigilant,” explained Deezer. “We recommend that our users change their passwords as a precaution,” the company said.
The basis of this stolen data had been for sale by hackers “in private rooms for a long time,” explained Damien Bancal. “On December 23,” more than three years after the initial theft according to Deezer, “the file was made freely available” on a freely accessible site well known to pirates and hackers, he added.
Specifically, according to restoreprivacy.org, the database contains the data of 46.2 million users in France, 37.1 million in Brazil and 15.3 million in Germany.