What is known
On November 18, 2025, Harvard found that systems used by its Alumni Affairs and Development office had been accessed after a phone-based phishing attack. The ShinyHunters extortion group later claimed it and leaked a 1.1GB archive in February after Harvard did not pay. On November 3, 2026, Have I Been Pwned loaded the data and found 850,500 unique email addresses (about 851k).
Who is affected
Alumni and their spouses or partners, donors, parents of current and former students, and some current students, faculty and staff.
Data exposed
Names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, home and business addresses, social media profiles, donation details, event attendance and other fundraising and biographical notes. Harvard says those systems did not hold Social Security numbers, passwords, card numbers or financial account numbers.
What to do now
- 01Expect phishing that knows your class year, address or giving history. Be wary of surprise calls or emails about donations, reunions or updating your info.
- 02Do not trust unexpected IT help desk calls or texts asking you to reset a password. Harvard specifically warned about these.
- 03If someone asks for money or details, hang up and call the alumni office or HUIT Service Desk yourself.
- 04Since your date of birth and address may be out there, a free credit freeze at the three bureaus is a cheap extra layer.
How to check
Have I Been Pwned has this dataset, so search your email there to see if you are in it.
To see what else is out there for the same email, like older breaches or stealer logs, use OSINT Pro's email lookup.