Twitter (X) Hit by 2.8 Billion Profile Data Leak in Alleged Insider Job
hackread.com
Follow us on Bluesky, Twitter (X), Mastodon and Facebook at @Hackread

Summary

A leak allegedly involving 2.87 billion Twitter (X) user profiles has surfaced on Breach Forums, with claims it was stolen by a disgruntled employee during recent layoffs.

The leak, shared by known forum user “ThinkingOne,” includes detailed metadata like bios, follower counts, tweet history, and account activity—but not email addresses.

Despite its scale, X has issued no response. The incident raises major privacy concerns amid silence from the company and speculation over the data’s true origin.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
    6·
    2 days ago

    Correct.

    As of Jan 2025, X (formerly Twitter) had around 335.7 million users, so how is it possible that data from 2.8 billion users has been leaked? One possible explanation is that the dataset includes aggregated or historical data, such as bot accounts that were created and later banned, inactive or deleted accounts that still lingered in historical records, or old data that was merged with newer data, increasing the total number of records.