Prosper Data Breach Impacts 17.6 Million Accounts
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Article Date: 2025-10-17
Article URL: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/10/17/2322217/prosper-data-breach-impacts-176-million-accounts
Article Image: https://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/privacy_64.png
Summary
Hackers have breached Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace, and stolen personal data for roughly 17.6 million people. The company says evidence shows confidential and personal information — including Social Security numbers — was obtained via unauthorised queries on company databases. Prosper detected the incident on 2 September and is still investigating; it says there’s no sign attackers accessed customer accounts or funds. Prosper plans to offer free credit monitoring as appropriate and is working with law enforcement. Have I Been Pwned has published details of the breach.
Key Points
- Approximately 17.6 million people affected.
- Exposed data reportedly includes Social Security numbers, government-issued IDs, names, dates of birth, addresses, employment and income details, credit status, IP addresses and browser user-agent details.
- Incident detected on 2 September; public disclosure and ongoing investigation reported in October 2025.
- Prosper states there is no evidence attackers accessed customer accounts or funds so far.
- Company will offer free credit monitoring as appropriate and is cooperating with law enforcement.
- Have I Been Pwned has listed the Prosper breach, enabling users to check if their data appears in the incident.
Content Summary
The breach targeted Prosper’s customer and applicant information stored in company databases. Attackers executed unauthorised queries and extracted confidential and proprietary data. Prosper, which has issued loans to over 2 million customers since 2005, is still determining the full scope of exposed fields and remains in the early stages of investigation. While day-to-day customer-facing services were not impacted, the scale and sensitivity of the leaked data raise serious identity-fraud and privacy concerns.
Context and Relevance
This incident is significant because lending platforms hold a concentrated set of highly sensitive personal and financial identifiers that are valuable to identity thieves and fraudsters. Massive PII exposures like this can drive long-tail fraud (account takeover, synthetic identity, tax and benefits fraud) and impose lasting remediation burdens on affected individuals and institutions. For anyone who has applied for credit or used Prosper, this is directly relevant; for the wider sector, it underscores continuing risks in how financial services store and protect personal data.
Why should I read this?
Short answer: because it’s huge and messy. 17.6 million people potentially had SSNs and other juicy bits nicked — so check Have I Been Pwned, think about a credit freeze, and keep an eye on your accounts. If you’ve ever applied for a loan or shared ID info with Prosper, this affects you. Also, worth noting for anyone in finance or security: this is another reminder to lock down database access and log unauthorised queries properly.
Author note
Punchy takeaway: this is a major PII leak from a lending marketplace — treat it as high priority if you or your customers used Prosper. The company says investigation is ongoing, but the types of exposed data mean real risk for identity theft.