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Charter Communications had data on approximately 4.9 million accounts exposed after the ShinyHunters group threatened extortion and subsequently published the stolen data.
According to HIBP, in May 2026 the ShinyHunters threat group targeted Charter Communications — the parent company of the consumer broadband and cable brand Spectrum — in a "pay or leak" extortion campaign. When Charter did not comply, the group published the stolen data publicly. Charter confirmed the incident took place.
As reported by HIBP, the published data contained roughly 4.9 million unique email addresses along with names, phone numbers, and physical addresses. A smaller subset of about 85,000 records, believed to originate from an internal employee directory, also included job titles. Charter stated that no sensitive personal information or customer proprietary network information (CPNI) was exfiltrated.
Approximately 4.85 million individuals are affected, primarily Spectrum customers and a smaller number of Charter employees whose records appeared in an internal directory.