Bleach Anime

In 2015, the Bleach Anime Forum, an independent fan community for the anime series Bleach at bleachanime.org, suffered a data breach that exposed the records of forum members. Our investigation team estimates the breach involved about 145,000 user records. No individual or group has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, and the forum itself has since gone offline. North IT Group and Mozilla Monitor both list the incident, attributing it to the now-defunct forum.

Limited public reporting: As of September 25, 2026, detailed company notices or major news coverage for this listing were limited in sources reviewed. The facts below rely primarily on the indexed fields plus any secondary sources cited.

January 1, 2015: External breach databases date the attack on the Bleach Anime Forum to this date, though the exact day the data was first exposed may differ.

November 29, 2023: Mozilla Monitor verified the breach and added it to its public notification database.

What Information Was Compromised?

Our analysis found the following data types in this breach: email addresses, usernames, and passwords.

According to our investigation team, the leak contained email addresses for 145,135 accounts and usernames for 145,133 accounts. Password data appeared for 108,123 of those records, meaning roughly 37,000 accounts in the leak had no password attached. North IT Group reports that the passwords were stored as salted MD5 hashes, a hashing method that is considered weak by modern standards because large numbers of such hashes can be cracked with widely available tools, particularly when the underlying passwords are simple.

Not every individual is affected by every type of data listed here.

What Are the Potential Risks for Affected Individuals?

The main risk from a forum breach like this one is password reuse. Many people use the same email and password combination across multiple sites, so credentials taken from a fan forum can be tested against email providers, social media, banking, and shopping accounts. This technique, called credential stuffing, is one of the most common ways accounts get taken over.

Because the passwords were hashed with MD5, attackers who obtained the database could attempt to reverse the hashes and recover the original passwords. Accounts whose passwords were weak or common words are the most exposed. Even accounts without a password in the leak still had email addresses and usernames exposed, which can be used for targeted phishing messages that appear credible because they reference the recipient's forum activity.

What Should You Do If You Were Affected?

If you had an account on the Bleach Anime Forum, change that password everywhere you reused it, starting with your email account. Email is the key to resetting most other accounts.

Use a unique, long password for every important account. A password manager can generate and store them for you.

Turn on two-factor authentication wherever it is offered, especially for email, banking, and social media.

Be cautious with unexpected emails referencing Bleach or old forum accounts. Attackers often use leaked details to make phishing messages look legitimate.

Watch for signs of account takeover, such as password reset emails you did not request or login alerts from unfamiliar devices.