Instagram’s “17 Million User Data Leak” Was Just Scraped Records from 2022

Instagram’s 17 million user data leak wasn’t a new breach – Hackread.com’s in-depth analysis shows it was scraped in 2022, leaked in 2023, and falsely repackaged in 2026.

This week has been a chaotic one, especially for Instagram users, after Malwarebytes announced on the 9th of January that it had tracked a data breach involving the Meta-owned platform. According to the company, hackers had leaked data from 17.5 million Instagram accounts online. The leaked information included usernames, email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses.

In Malwarebytes’ own words on X (formerly Twitter), “Cybercriminals stole the sensitive information of 17.5 million Instagram accounts, including usernames, physical addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and more.“

The tweet implied that the incident was a recent data breach. That claim is inaccurate. Hackread.com’s investigation confirms that while the data is real and not fabricated, cybercriminals ...