Another day, another data breach — and this time, it could mean a different kind of trouble for some of the victims.
You may remember when the sex site Ashley Madison was hit by a hack in 2015 that exposed the information of 40 million users — well, that was nothing compared to a recent breach that’s 13 times the size of that one.
Millions of ‘adult’ website users exposed
According to Leaked Source, ‘online relationship’ company Friend Finder Network has been hacked — exposing more than 412 million accounts, email addresses and passwords dating back 20 years, all of which have been made available on criminal marketplaces.
The news comes not long after one of the company’s websites, AdultFriendFinder.com, suffered a major breach that exposed sensitive information of nearly four million users back in 2015.
Read more: 7 steps to create stronger passwords for all of your accounts
This time, the good news for users is that the leaked data didn’t include a lot of detailed personal information. The bad news, for some, is that the leaked accounts could confirm whether someone was a user of one of Friend Finder’s various websites — including Penthouse, Stripshow and iCams.
Based on numbers reported by Leaked Source, here’s a breakdown of the company’s sites that were hacked, which affected a total of 412,214,295 accounts:
- Most of the hacked accounts — about 340 million — were from the adult dating site AdultFriendFinder.com.
- 62.6 million were from adult webcam site Cams.com, which has the following tagline: ‘Where adults meet models for sex chat live through webcams.’
- 7.1 million were from Penthouse.com.
- 1.5 million were from another webcam site, Stripshow.com.
- 1 million were from iCams.com, where users can view ‘free live sex cams.’
Details about the leaked information
Leaked Source says it believes about 15 million accounts involved in the breach had previously been deleted by users, but the information was never removed from the company’s database.
What’s surprising is that Friend Finder Network was apparently still storing users’ passwords in a format that wasn’t very secure, even after the major breach back in 2015. The company also reportedly received notices over the past several weeks about potential security vulnerabilities.
Leaked Source says about 99% of all passwords used on the company’s site have now been exposed, but the group confirmed that it will not release the information to the public.
Unlike the massive hack in 2015, this one ‘does not appear to contain sexual preference data,’ according to ZDNet.
But, the leaked data does contain account usernames, emails, passwords, the last login, IP addresses, browser information and more — which is why some are worried that the breach could lead to extortion and other trouble for victims involved.
Friend Finder Network has not yet published anything about the breach on its website.
Read more: How to make your passwords less hackable
