An Adult dating site, AdultFriendFinder.com, promotes itself as a place to meet people for casual sexual relationships without the bother of seeking a lifetime relationship. In order to get attention on the site people put all sorts of very personal information in their bio, such as sexual preference, if they are cheating on a spouse and their email address, address, phone number and date of birth. All of this may seem like a great adventure to those using the site. However, it has now turned into an online adult dating disaster. The site has been hacked!

Hackers Steal Very Personal Info

Many web sites including the online Wall Street Journal reported that an adult dating site was hacked.

In one of the more sensitive data breaches of the last few years, a popular site for dating and causal sexual relationships has allegedly been hacked, with personal details of people looking for hookups splayed online, according to a report by a U.K. television station.

A security specialist in April discovered the trove of data online and wrote about her findings. She said the person who posted the data sets claimed to be owed nearly $250,000 by the company.

Security researchers from Digital Shadows, a London information security company, said they have analyzed some of the alleged Adult FriendFinder files posted online and found usernames, IP addresses, states, zip codes, ages, indication of sexual preferences and, so far, more than 2.6 million email addresses.

If you have been cheating on your spouse and have published all sorts of personal info on AdultFriendFinder.com you may want to unplug your internet connection and better yet move to Tierra del Fuego.

Identity Theft

Whenever you put your personal information on a credit card, online payment system, etc., you are at risk of identity theft. Courtesy of ABC News here are a few scary facts about identify theft.

With more information “out there” than we can possibly know, identity theft has become the third certainty in life, right behind death and taxes. And because so many major compromises include Social Security numbers – the skeleton key to not only your financial life, but also your health care and many other aspects of daily life-the damage can be life-changing.

The five points made by ABC:

• A billion records or more have been leaked in 2014 alone
• There really is no anonymity in so-called anonymous record keeping systems
• They can get to your medical history
• Someone can reroute your tax refund
• Kids in foster care are at risk as are the families that care for them.

And what we have to say is that:

If you are dumb enough to advertise in AdultFriendFinder.com that you are cheating on your spouse you deserve what you get!

Dating Apps Can Be Problems As Well

We have written recently about the risks of some dating apps. With some the issue is bad programming and with others the basic idea is faulty. The problems with some apps go beyond identity theft to the risk of being stalked.

A dating app that functions as designed is a problem a well. Happn dating app allows users to connect to users who pass within a 250 radius.

Happn is the latest addition to the app-based dating scene. Happn helps you track down strangers whom you’ve walked past or queued for a coffee behind at Pret. Rather than liking random people to match with in your general location (like Tinder), Happn uses GPS to connect users who cross paths within a 250 metre radius. So, whoever you encounter (knowingly or not) and like the look of, you can see if they’re on Happn and tap the app’s “heart” symbol to show your interest. If they heart you back then the dating begins.

This one is not about identity theft with dating apps but rather leaving yourself open to some nut case who decides to stalk you!

Use common sense when dating online and avoid an online dating site disaster.