Frequently Asked Questions

What you do with my email after I enter it?

The process is straightforward. Your email is queried against our database, and the records that we identify as belonging to you are sent to your email. We do not store your email on our servers (unless you subscribe to HIBC).

Can I have a copy of your database?

No, you cannot. Our goal with this platform is to take the most ethical approach available. There is absolutely no reason you should have to look up an email that doesn’t belong to you.

How is HIBC able to search through billions of emails so fast?

The backend technology behind HIBC is pretty simple. We use MongoDB with a hashed index to allow ease of access. By using an index – it makes it possible to deliver results much faster than usual. Everything also operates on solid-state drives to give us that extra edge needed to make sure that we can provide the results as quickly as possible to you.

My email has been compromised in "Exploit_in", what is this?

Exploit.in is an online ‘hacking’ forum.
A file containing over 600 million emails and passwords was posted on the forum in the following format: email:password. Nobody knows if this file has been fabricated; however, the author claims that he obtained the records from popular hacks and compiled a large list.

What's the difference between HIBC and other platforms?

There are many differences between HIBC and other platforms. We have attempted to take the most ethical approach while building this platform. Other platforms allow you to conduct a lookup of any email account; this can assist criminals in their activity and save them hours, or potentially days of attempting to find information about you. A lot of these databases are in the public domain, and once they know what database(s) your email is situated in, they can search for that specific database and extract the relevant information that they are looking for.

Can you remove my email from your database?

Yes. Our goal is to deliver threat intelligence to you, so that you can take action. Once you have been made aware of the intelligence, we have absolutely no reason to continue storing your email. Please use our contact page if you are interested in taking this option.

Why have I discovered my email on a website that I have never used?

While we try our best to validate the integrity of a breach, it is almost impossible to verify that the contents have not been fabricated or modified. Perhaps somebody used your email to sign up to the website in question, the chances of this could be relatively high. There are billions of users that are active on the internet, and almost all have signed up to a service or website that requires an email account.

How do I know that you're not harvesting my email for phishing attacks or spam?

HIBC was designed to assist and prevent individuals from becoming further victims of cyber crime. We aim to do this by delivering the platform that we are offering without any interest in profit in any shape or form. We have no intentions to harvest emails and have not built our platform in such a way to do so. However, it is virtually impossible for us to prove that these are our real intentions. If you are still worried, you should probably avoid using our platform.

Also, consider the fact that we identify over 50,000 emails on a daily basis. One or two email accounts is useless to us, not to mention the fact that we most likely already have your email(s) stored in our database. If we were to harvest your email addresses to sell to spammers, we would require a significant amount of email addresses to be profitable. It is evident to note that almost every online service requires your email address (most of the time, they require a whole list of personal details).

Where are you obtaining the databases from?

Everything that has been merged into our database has been obtained from the public domain.

Do you have an API available?

For information in regards to our API, please contact us.