Online dating is intimidating enough without data breaches happening on those sites. However, it’s a risk one takes when signing up for these or any online accounts. In this case, the site AdultFriendFinder.com has been hit again. It was previously breached last year, which resulted in four million user accounts being accessed. This one tops that with a whopping 412 million accounts exposed. Included in this batch were user names, weakly encrypted or non-encrypted passwords, email addresses, IP addresses, browser information, the last visit details, and whether or not the user had paid for any services.
Being blamed for this is a security vulnerability that allowed an attacker to access the source code on the site and get to the data that was stored on its databases. A spokesperson for the company did confirm that many had brought the vulnerability to their attention and that it was fixed. However, it appears that it was not addressed before someone gained access.
Anyone who has ever had an account on this site or any of its sister sites is encouraged to change passwords immediately. Include upper and lower case letters, at least one number, at least one special character such as the percent sign (%) or an asterisk (*), and make it a minimum of eight characters. It’s becoming more important these days to use unique passwords for every online site. Password reuse is being blamed for more and more incidents. Recent high profile examples include streaming audio company, Pandora and social media site, Twitter.
Also, included in this breach was information from other sites related to this one. Sixty-two million accounts were accessed from Cams.com and another seven million from the Penthouse website, which had been recently sold. Some from other smaller properties were also involved as well as over 15 million accounts that had been deleted, but not purged from the site. An investigation is continuing. However, that should not stop anyone from changing passwords.
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