1.5 Million Accounts of Dating Application “Hook Up Dating (HUD)” Are Available Online!
HUD (Hook Up Dating) is an adult dating application, owned by C&Z Tech Limited. It is a New Zealand based company, which is encouraging adult men and women to have extramarital affairs. This company is running so many dating websites and applications, which are motivating adults to have a fling. More than 1.5 Million accounts of its users are available on open internet. MacKeeper Security Research Center has discovered the database of this dating company. Leaked data contains personal information of HUD users. According to security researchers of MacKeeper Security Research Center, the leaked database is available without any password.
Leaked Database Is Related To Following Sites and Apps
- HookUpDating.mobi
- HaveAFling.mobi
- HaveAnAffair.mobi
- HUD (Application)
Leaked Information
Leaked database contains email addresses of users, their passwords (Which are available in plain text), Date of Birth Details, Gender, Personal Photos of Users, Information about country and residence. Moreover, personal information of HUD users such as, Height of user, weight of user, body type, interests, hobbies, desires, race and information about his/her seeking person is also available in this leaked database. Information about user’s drinking and smoking hobbies is also available in this leaked database.
Story never ends here, Leaked database also contains short bios of many HUD users. During chat, users had shared their whatsApp and SnapChat user names with each other. In some cases, even personal mobile numbers of users were present. Here are some examples of short bios, which has been found by security researchers. According to one record, user’s personal bio is “I am already in a relationship but looking for some extra”. In another record, “I am single and I don’t get out much”. The hilarious and funniest one is “I am here to f**k only”. People need to think twice before sharing any personal information on internet. Even financial and e-commerce websites are suffering data breaches and it is just a dating website.
Response of Dating Company After This Incident
When Security Research firm MacKeeper informed the company about this data leak, they immediately respond to secure their leaked data. But the reaction and response of dating company was nothing short of dishonest. Anton (an employee of this dating company) said that the number of affected users is very less. The leaked data belongs to our test databases and maximum data which has been leaked is fake and dummy data. Anton also said, “The vulnerability, due to which all this happened has been fixed by our security team and database is secure now”. According to dating company, the passwords of affected accounts have been changed by them and they will also inform the users about it.
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But on the other hand, security researchers are saying that it seems like the leaked data is live data. They tried to contact affected users. One user said, “When I installed the application, I think it is similar to famous dating application tinder, but it was not. First I filled my details in application but then I deleted my account”. The user also said that it is very shocking to hear that company is storing personal information of its users in an unsecured database.
Securtiy Notice To Users From Company
A security notice has been published by the dating company for its users. In this notice company is asking its users to change their account passwords. Company said, “For security reasons, we are upgrading our databases, please change you passwords”.
Now the question is, why they didn’t inform their users about actual incident?
Suggestion To Dating Sites Users
Change your password if you are a user of this dating company. Using a dating website or not is all upto you. But we want to remind you the incident of “Ashley Madison Data Breach”, which occurs in July 2015. It was also a dating website which was encouraging people to have an affair. Database of this website had been breached by a group of hackers and they released it online. It was so embarrassing for its users and this this incident broke up families as well. Never use those dating websites that are not taking your privacy in as a serious matter.
If you are thinking how this information could be useful for hackers, read this article to clear your doubts:
Why Hackers hack Normal user’s social media accounts?
