Your Data May Be Compromised: Hotmail Checked Leak Hit 3,540

HEROIC analysts identified a combolist called Hotmail Checked, uploaded to a Telegram channel on January 27, 2025. The file contains 3,540 records pairing Hotmail email addresses with plaintext passwords and the URLs confirming each login works, with the "checked" label meaning every credential was verified before distribution.

Why This Is Dangerous

A verified combolist removes the guesswork for an attacker. Instead of testing thousands of stale or dead logins, whoever has this file knows all 3,540 credentials were confirmed to work, and because the passwords are stored in plaintext, they can start using them immediately.

What Was Exposed

• Email addresses
• Plaintext passwords
• Associated URLs

Why This Matters

Your data may already be compromised without any obvious sign of it. Because Hotmail accounts are often the recovery email for banking, shopping, and social media logins, an attacker with access to your inbox can reset passwords across multiple services, turning one exposed account into a chain of credential stuffing, account takeover, and financial fraud.

How Combolists Work

A combolist gathers email or username and password pairs, usually pulled from stealer logs or older breaches, into a single file ready for immediate use. Sellers who label a list "checked" have run each credential through automated tools that attempt to log in and confirm success, which is what makes a verified list like this one more dangerous than an unverified dump of the same size.

Check If You Are Affected

With 3,540 verified Hotmail accounts now exposed, checking whether your email is included only takes a moment. HEROIC's free breach scanner searches a database of more than 400 billion leaked records, including combolists like Hotmail Checked, to tell you instantly if you have been affected. If you have, change that password everywhere you have reused it and enable multi-factor authentication.