Scribd tells users a breach exposed emails and partial card details

Scribd is notifying users that an unauthorized party reached one of its systems and may have taken email addresses plus partial payment details, according to a notice a user posted on Hacker News on Friday evening. The post had passed 330 points by Saturday afternoon.

The posted email says it was sent by Epiq, Scribd's notification partner, on behalf of Scribd, Slideshare, Everand and Fable, and lists the exposed fields: email address, the last four digits of the card, card issuer, expiry date, country and payment history. It says full card details were not included and that Scribd has "no evidence that this data has been misused." The poster said the notice arrived on Monday, October 26. Another commenter said theirs arrived October 30.

Scribd's own help center page, titled "Information about the recent security incident," carries an update stamp of October 1, 2026. It says the company closed the vulnerability, brought in outside forensic experts, and told law enforcement and data protection authorities. It says most affected accounts had basic account information exposed and a smaller number had more sensitive data. It recommends resetting passwords on all four services.

The page does not say how many accounts were affected, what the entry point was, or when the intrusion began. Scribd says notices go out in phases, so a missing email does not clear an account. One commenter asked why customers were not told all at once, and the posted Q&A answers that notices are staggered. The gap between the October 1 page and notices arriving more than three weeks later is not explained.

The email text is a user's copy, not a document Scribd has published in full, and Trestlewire could not independently confirm it. No news outlet had reported the 2026 incident when this was written. Scribd has been here before: in April 2013 it reset passwords after saying under 1 percent of accounts were possibly compromised, as Threatpost reported at the time.

Scribd lists a call center at 877-361-9887. Users who get a message claiming to be from Scribd are told to type the site address themselves instead of clicking links.