CNN —Email addresses linked to more than 200 million Twitter profiles are currently circulating on underground hacker forums, security experts say.
The apparent data leak could expose the real-life identities of anonymous Twitter users and make it easier for criminals to hijack Twitter accounts, the experts warned, or even victims’ accounts on other websites.
The trove of leaked records also includes Twitter users’ names, account handles, follower numbers and the dates the accounts were created, according to forum listings reviewed by security researchers and shared with CNN.
Troy Hunt, a security researcher, said Thursday that his analysis of the data “found 211,524,284 unique email addresses” that had been leaked.
The account data could also be valuable to hackers who can use the information as part of password-reset attempts and account takeovers.