Dating site leaked user details of 1.5 million ‘cheaters’
Wed 5 Oct 2016
A New Zealand-based online dating network, which advertises itself as a destination for finding partners for one night stands and ‘discreet’ extramarital affairs, has leaked the personal data of over 1.5 million of its users.
C&Z Tech Limited, owners of dating websites and mobile apps HaveaFling.mobi, HaveAnAffair.mobi, and HookUpDating.mobi, has been found to have openly exposed the contents of its unencrypted user database online. The leaked data includes usernames, email addresses, plain-text passwords, gender, dates of birth, profile photos, and country of origin.
Other personal details, which were optional entries, such as body type, height, weight, desires, interests, race, preferences, and smoking and drinking habits were also among the leaked information.
Now alerted to the issue by the MacKeeper Security Research Center, C&Z has secured the affected database but continues to deny the mistake. In an email sent to MacKeeper, C&Z wrote: ‘Thanks for letting us know, the MongoDB database was only live for a few hours as we were testing migrating data from SQL to MongoDB, so most of them were just dummy data with randomly generated emails and passwords, and not our live database, we shut down the database about an hour ago, and there’s no data breach, only you guys had detected it…’
MacKeeper does not believe this statement to be true.
The online dating industry has met with some of the most notable data breaches over the past few years. The high-profile hacking of cheating site Ashley Madison in 2015, saw attackers taking off with over 25 gigabytes of company data and user information. Despite the scandal, it seems that the publicity afforded the online infidelity market a considerable boost.
Earlier this year, ‘elite’ dating platform BeautifulPeople.com also fell foul of a data breach which leaked profile details of over 1.1 million users, including sexual preference, relationship status and income. In addition to the sensitive user data, 15 million private messages between users were also leaked and sold by internet dark market traders.
