Cybersecurity news platform HackRead reported that an anonymous hacker published a 14.5 gigabyte database. The database contains information on over seven million Chess.com accounts.

The database includes usernames, user IDs, fully listed or partially hidden email addresses, countries, locations, ratings, last login timestamps, and other data. Passwords and private account information were not compromised.

The person responsible for the publication claims that the information was collected by scraping the Chess.com website. Scraping is the automated collection of information from websites, applications, or public interfaces. A scraper is capable of collecting large numbers of records and combining them into a single database.

The existence of the scraped database does not imply that the company’s internal systems were hacked. The specific method of obtaining data from Chess.com was not confirmed at the time of publication.

Chess.com has experienced multiple data security incidents throughout its history. In June 2025, Chess.com confirmed a data breach where protected data of more than 4,500 users was compromised. In 2023, 1.3 million user records were scraped due to a vulnerability in Chess.com’s public information delivery system.

Credit: Stuart Isett / Fortune