According to a recent report, one of the most popular websites for dating and sexual encounters, AdultFriendFinder has been hacked, leaving millions of members’ personal details exposed.
Experts say that this is one of the most sensitive data breaches that happened in the last couple of years because it involves personal details about the users, not just their financial info.
Officials reported that 3.9 million AdultFriendFinder members were found on a forum dedicated to hackers.
On the online forum there were personal details of the members, including their sexual preferences, the date of birth, personal email address and in some cases, extremely sensitive info like whether the members were on the dating site because they are planning to cheat on the spouse.
The dating website is owned by FriendFinder Networks, which stated that as soon as they discovered that the site had been hacked, they immediately reported the incident to the law enforcement officials.
The dating site said that they also contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help them solve the case.
According to the dating site, there was no evidence that the hackers had broken into the site to steal the financial information of the members.
A company spokesman said that no one knows for sure why the hackers broke into AdultFriendFinder and further investigation is needed in order for the problem to be solved.
The company added that it will provide updates as soon as the investigating team comes up with new information about the case.
The most important thing is to protect the personal details of their members, the company said.
Compared to other recent hacking attacks, which have exposed personal details, like email addresses, passwords or credit card numbers, the hacking of AdultFriendFinder is a very personal one.
The dating site has more than 64 million members and markets itself as the “hottest dating, hook-up and sex community”.
AdultFriendFinder is mostly about sex dates and doesn’t advertise itself as being a website where members can find true love, like other dating sites do.
A security specialist discovered the hack and reported it back in April. She said that someone, presumably the one who hacked into the data, said that AdultFriendFinder has more than $250,000 to pay back.
A team of security experts from an information security company explained that they have found and analyzed some of the files that were illegally posted online. Some of the information included usernames, ages, zip codes, sexual preferences and IP addresses.
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