BeautifulPeople.com Hacked & Personal Data Sold
Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Friday, May 27 2016 @ 09:38 am
Last modified on
BeautifulPeople.com[*1] boasts that it offers “online dating for beautiful people only,” but it’s currently making headlines for something far from pretty. The site was recently attacked by hackers who put the personal info of 1.1 million members for sale on the black market.
According to security expert Troy Hunt, the data belonged to members who joined before July 2015. Information like weight, height, job, and phone number was reportedly compromised, though no passwords or financial details were included.
"The breach involves data that was provided by members prior to mid-July 2015. No more recent user data or any data relating to users who joined from mid-July 2015 onward is affected," Beautiful People said in a statement. "As far as we were aware, at that time [in December 2015], only the two security researchers who informed us of the breach had access to this data."
Chris Vickery, who originally discovered breach, told the BBC[*2] the firm acted quickly after he notified them - but it was already too late. "They published it openly to the world with no protection whatsoever," he said.
Like the Ashley Madison hack – which exposed 39 million people hoping to cheat on their partners – there’s a sense of schadenfreude to the news. A part of us enjoys seeing “bad” people (or in this case, people who have an inflated sense of their own goodness) get knocked down a peg. We call it karma, but what it really is, is a warning.
Hacking is a scary phenomenon no matter what, and doubly so when it’s done with the intention to shame. Online dating is now so commonplace that many users have grown lax about how they do it. Theoretically we know we need to protect our personal information, but how much effort do we really put into it? Our data is bought and sold constantly, whether we know it or not, both legally and illegally. Let the Beautiful People hack be a reminder to prioritize your privacy.
The good news is, the company says the leak has since been patched. But there’s no way to reclaim the data that’s now circulating. Victims of the hack must now take precautions like changing passwords and monitoring for identity theft.
Beautiful People said all affected members are being notified about the breach. You can also use Troy Hunt’s HaveIBeenPwned.com[*3] to find out what, if any, personal information about you is publically available online.