1k Data Breaches Later, the Disclosure Lag Is Worse

For years, I've been trying my best to stay low-key when it comes to my personal information on the internet. I don't create new accounts, I never cross-login with my email address, I don't use phones. Certainly not perfect, but a lot of times I'm preferring privacy over convenience.

At the same time, my government and society at large is pushing more and more for "digital everything". It's great when it works. But to me, every new service translates to a new opportunity for my data to be leaked.

I think one reason why we're still seeing so many breaches is that security is hard and thus expensive - and on the other hand, other than customer push-back, companies or other providers have pretty much nothing to worry about when their data gets extorted. To me, this is impossible. When I give my private data to them, I'm giving them something very valuable. If being careless with that value basically has no consequences, the incentives to care are low.

We need to establish measures of accountability for data holders. Not securing customer data appropriately needs to be persecutable, and the affected parties need to be given a right for compensation. Of course, that's not going to happen. It would be difficult to implement in practice, if at all possible. But as long as there is no monetary incentive for data holders to be as careful as possible, the laxness is going to continue.

Is there ANY business motivation for any corporation to open such information up sooner than later?

At this stage just expect that every accounts will get leaked or rooted, it's a matter of when, not if...

Use varying email `plus addressing` (john+am2604@foo.com), varying passwords or passkey and 2FA on anything remotely important (use of your identity, not just financials).

>why is it still needed?

It's not needed. There are already alternatives that could take its place. Some of them are able to actually show you what data leaked instead of leaving you blind of what was actually included in the breach.

there will be more data breaches.

Google and Apple are throttling hotfix updates (for app developers) as tons of code pushes to their infra (by vibe coders) is straining their system.

The are fixing this by throttling updates to minimum 3 days review period.

so good luck fixing the vulnerability or data leaks in your apps.

Is there ANY business motivation for any corporation to open such information up sooner than later?

Depends where they are in the world. I _think_ GDPR would be a good enough business reason, as they set a ticking clock of 72 hours from the breach to notifying individuals who are in the breach. And the fines involved are pretty steep (almost effing vertical for some).

For tech B2B companies where the founders or executive team hold the majority stake in the organisation, yes. A failure to disclose or respond when there is a public notice on an .onion address, or a sample set of your customer data has been published online, creates tangible, direct commercial impact.

You should expect every deal in your pipeline to stall. Your product and company will be flagged by every GRC team, and every stakeholder trying to purchase your product will suddenly need to go to risk committees, or into meetings with CISOs, CTOs, and founders, to explain why buying from you is worth the risk compared to competitors who have not been breached.

If you have not addressed the issue, it becomes a literal deal-breaker. The sooner you write the press release, notify customers, and deal with the underlying problems, the sooner you can turn the incident into a credible story about how you responded, contained it, and improved.

If you do not respond, or you deny it, your deals are dead.

The reason I prefaced this with companies where the founders or executive team hold a majority stake is that I sincerely do not believe the same incentives do not exist for most other companies. The stock price is not meaningfully impacted by incidents like this; it is more affected by vibes, market conditions, and the general tech economy. There are a hundred things that will move the stock price before cybersecurity and data incidents do.

Operating revenue and profit, however, will be impacted. Executives on a death march for growth, who understand that an incident like this can wipe away a year of progress (and essentially their life's work), are far more likely to take it seriously. They are directly exposed to the commercial consequences.

The companies you see trying to sweep this under the rug, or outright ignore it, are usually one of two things.

1. They are so out of touch with their customers that they would rather listen to a lawyer chasing the “ideal legal-risk outcome” than pursue the best financial, customer and cybersecurity risk outcome. In my experience these are executives who are independently wealthy or already come from wealth, and their priority is simply keeping the status quo.

2. They are simply not incentivised to deal with it properly (carrot, nor stick). That is: they don't lose their bonus, they don't face the axe, and they aren't rewarded for doing anything "well" in response to it. They might say they're "inherently" exposed because if the business is impacted, so are they (stock price, performance bonuses) -- but that's incredibly disingenuous, as it's pretty much always not a material difference to them.

For B2C or B2B doing "traditional" stuff? No. The incentive simply just isn't there.

GDPR, CCPA, whatever, hasn't moved the dial.

At this stage just expect that every accounts will get leaked or rooted, it's a matter of when, not if...

Use varying email `plus addressing` (john+am2604@foo.com), varying passwords or passkey and 2FA on anything remotely important (use of your identity, not just financials).

I recommend people use proper email aliasing, not plus addressing. Duckduckgo makes a free one that's can integrate into Bitwarden, if you have iCloud+ Apple's($0.99/month) hide my email is good. Addy.io and SimpleLogin are the best and allow PGP encryption to prevent another party having access to your emails, but they are paid for full features.

> Organizations like the IAB require that advertisers normalize email addresses so that they can be correlated and tracked, regardless of users' privacy wishes.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email-aliasing/#over-plus-a...

The + trick is useless to protect you, obviously. Instead, use a a service like simplelogin to create unique emails for every place you sign in.

>why is it still needed?

This is a bad idea, for multiple reasons.

https://www.troyhunt.com/here-are-all-the-reasons-i-dont-mak...

Can you give examples of these alternatives?

there will be more data breaches.

Google and Apple are throttling hotfix updates (for app developers) as tons of code pushes to their infra (by vibe coders) is straining their system.

The are fixing this by throttling updates to minimum 3 days review period.

so good luck fixing the vulnerability or data leaks in your apps.

If you do not respond, or you deny it, your deals are dead.

The companies you see trying to sweep this under the rug, or outright ignore it, are usually one of two things.

For B2C or B2B doing "traditional" stuff? No. The incentive simply just isn't there.

GDPR, CCPA, whatever, hasn't moved the dial.

> Organizations like the IAB require that advertisers normalize email addresses so that they can be correlated and tracked, regardless of users' privacy wishes.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email-aliasing/#over-plus-a...

The + trick is useless to protect you, obviously. Instead, use a a service like simplelogin to create unique emails for every place you sign in.

Dont worry the vibecoders will tire out, they're the sane people who were making NFTs and mining bitcoin, they'll move onto the next hot thing soon enough. Its more an archetype, not necessarily the same exact people. They dont commit long term.

I am not sure I get the connection between AI code holding up review processes and data breaches.

A minor problem with GDPR is enforcement.

At least in germany it feels like you need a very dedicated and persistent person to make the case against a company/service (bonus points if they get media attention). Other countries are a bit better but it generally is not very consistent.

The enforcement for most small to mid-sized companies is often just not present and resources for relevant agencies are often only reluctantly allocated. Ime, in government institutions it is generally not very respected as it "impedes progress".

Can you give examples of these alternatives?

A minor problem with GDPR is enforcement.

I am not sure I get the connection between AI code holding up review processes and data breaches.

The post made a pretty clear claim, I thought: the volume of apps being sent through is so extreme that they can't keep up with their review process.

This is a bad idea, for multiple reasons.

https://www.troyhunt.com/here-are-all-the-reasons-i-dont-mak...

I don't think he meant "show the actual data," I think he meant "what leaked? My name, address, phone number, email, medical records, payment history, bank account number?"

We get a "your private data is now public" email, but knowing exactly what data turns that from a depressing statement on how much corporations value their customers' privacy into something actionable.

The post made a pretty clear claim, I thought: the volume of apps being sent through is so extreme that they can't keep up with their review process.

I don't think he meant "show the actual data," I think he meant "what leaked? My name, address, phone number, email, medical records, payment history, bank account number?"

This information is shown on the site of the breach, as example: https://haveibeenpwned.com/Breach/BakerDistributing

Today, I loaded the 1,000th data breach into Have I Been Pwned. Reflecting on that milestone number, I pondered how to mark the occasion in writing, and what immediately came to mind was a very simple question: why is it still needed? Especially considering the emergence of privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA in the 12 and a half years since I started HIBP, what possible purpose does it still serve? The title kinda gives the answer away, and the big number we hit today coincided with another pattern that makes everything worse: increasingly long lag times for disclosure.

This is all going to be anecdotal, and as far as I know, there are no hard numbers for me to cite, but the evidence is everywhere. Here's what I mean:

New breach: Cruise operator Carnival was targeted in a ShinyHunters “pay or leak” attack last week. 8.7M records with 7.5M email addresses and loyalty program data were published yesterday. 85% were already in @haveibeenpwned. Read more: https://t.co/QhqNt0WucV

— Have I Been Pwned (@haveibeenpwned) April 24, 2026

That was the 24th of April, five days after news of the incident had broken. Given ShinyHunters' MO, Carnival would have known about the breach many days before they ratcheted up extortion pressure by announcing the impending leak on their website. The subsequent leak on the 24th was very public: an announcement was posted to the group's dark-web site, the data itself was published to their clear-web site, and industry commentary followed:

🚨 Massive Data Breach

Carnival Corporation (https://t.co/pGlchZ1yFy) reportedly impacted — 8.7M+ customer records exposed

📊 Alleged data includes:
• Full names & email addresses
• Dates of birth & gender
• Location data & loyalty program details

🎯 Linked to ShinyHunters… pic.twitter.com/Fd8tNFPqpd

— Intel and Breaches (@IBreaches) April 24, 2026

Per that last post, the data was then reposted to all sorts of other places: hacking forums, Telegram channels, and who knows how many other, more private locations. The point is that it spread quickly, extensively, and, without any shadow of a doubt, Carnival were aware of this. They then told people about it on the 27th... of May. According to their press release that same day, this was 43 days after learning about the incident. For more than 6 weeks, data breach victims whose names, dates of birth, email addresses, loyalty program details and, of course, their association with Carnival leaked to the public en masse had absolutely no idea of their exposure. And if they asked Carnival about it? Well:

As recently as four days ago, we heard “I’m in the breach per HIBP, but Carnival is telling me there’s no breach!” pic.twitter.com/YYmGm3NzEY

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) May 28, 2026

So, why the delay? Last week's press coverage may give some insight:

thorough and time-consuming analysis of the impacted data

Often, the reason I hear for disclosure lag is "we needed to fully assess the scope of exposed data before notifying people". The issue I have with this position is that it implies that even an early heads-up can't happen until there's a very comprehensive understanding of the impact. There are many things that take time to establish after a data breach: the jurisdiction each individual sits in, the precise data that was exposed about them and additional information that may be buried in terabytes of exfiltrated data in all sorts of different formats. But pulling out email addresses and sending early notification is very easy - I've literally done it a thousand times now.

This isn't just a Carnival issue; in fact, it was off the back of this next one only a few days later that I was prompted to write this post:

FFS. 45 days. Even worse than Carnival. And like Carnival, very broadly distributed and easily accessible by the masses, including HIBP:

New breach: Zara was named as a ShinyHunters victim last month, after which data containing 197k unique email addresses was published. Impacted data included customer support records, product SKUs and order IDs. 60% were already in @haveibeenpwned. More: https://t.co/0hIQbqoBCk

— Have I Been Pwned (@haveibeenpwned) May 8, 2026

I have a working theory that the disclosure lag is worsening in part due to the proliferation of class actions immediately following a breach. In my live stream last weekend, I did a quick search for the DentaQuest breach:

Three of the first four results are all for class actions related to the breach, and there are two more class action results a little further down the page. I've been raising concerns about the adverse impact of class actions for many years now, and it's worse than I've ever seen. By a big margin, too.

It's not just me observing how the behaviour of these orgs appears to be influenced by how lawyers will respond, either. Have a read of this post from Roby Joyce (check out his bio if you don't already know why he's worth paying attention to) after he learned about his exposure in the ZenBusiness breach via HIBP:

What especially caught my eye was this sentence:

That is not a customer-protection posture. That is a litigation posture.

This isn't about prioritising the customer, it's about protecting the organisation. I don't think most people understand that organisational accountability really lies with their shareholders, first and foremost. All the pleasantries around "customers are our number one priority" and "we take security seriously" are all secondary to shareholder happiness, and minimising the chances of getting their arses sued into oblivion is a big part of that.

Rob's quoted comment above came immediately after the response he received from ZenBusiness after asking them about the incident:

If we determine that an incident resulted in the exposure of your protected PII, we will provide notice as legally required

Which brings me to the next problem as it relates to disclosure lag: it may be infinite. By which I mean you may never be told. Ever. GDPR allows it. CCPA allows it. Whatever your local privacy regulation acronym is also allows it. A couple of years ago, I wrote about the data breach disclosure conundrum, where I explained how privacy regs have very specific carve-outs around the circumstances under which data breach victims must be notified. For example:

If the breach is likely to result in a high risk of adversely affecting individuals’ rights and freedoms, you must also inform those individuals without undue delay.

That's in the UK, here's our carve-out in Australia:

Under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, an organisation or agency that must comply with Australian privacy law has to tell you if a data breach is likely to cause you serious harm

You see the loophole, right? As far as I know, ZenBusiness still hasn't contacted any individual victims. And like Carnival and Zara, their data is all over the place. Same with Charter, which was in the press last week, where they were quoted as saying the following:

No sensitive personal information (PI) or customer proprietary network information (CPNI) data was exfiltrated by the threat actor as a result of recent activity

I'm not aware of any disclosure they've made to individuals, but to use Rob's term, that sentence reads like legal posturing to me. It's technically correct, of course: there are very clear definitions for sensitive PII, for example, under California's CCPA:

a specific subset of personal information that includes certain government identifiers (such as social security numbers); an account log-in, financial account, debit card, or credit card number with any required security code, password, or credentials allowing access to an account; precise geolocation; contents of mail, email, and text messages; genetic data; biometric information processed to identify a consumer; information concerning a consumer’s health, sex life, or sexual orientation; or information about racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, or union membership.

GDPR has a similar definition for "special categories of personal data":

personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation

In other words, none of this applies to any of the ShinyHunters breaches in the examples I've been providing above.

I've been in many meetings with breached companies over the years where they're obviously aiming to skirt around disclosure obligations. Clearly, these obligations aren't legal ones, but I will argue they're social ones. We expect to be notified when our data is leaked, and we believe organisations should be required to inform us. Therein lies the gap.

I'll finish by recognising that every organisation I've referred to here, and indeed every one I've loaded into HIBP, has been the victim of a criminal act. I'm especially sympathetic to those who've been the target of an aggressive extortion campaign, and I know it's been an absolute nightmare for the folks in those companies who've been left to clean up the mess. However... here we are. Clearly, their goals are misaligned with ours regarding breach disclosure, and that's why, 1,000 breaches later, HIBP still exists.

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1k Data Breaches Later, the Disclosure Lag Is Worse

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