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Somewhere in the back of our heads, rattling around with all the other information we ignore like "You really shouldn't drink that last shot of tequila," we know that having an online account means accepting the risk that that account might be hacked. But no matter how many times we hear horror stories of it happening to someone else, we never quite believe it could happen to us.

Imagine the surprise, then, that Cupid Media users must have felt when the service was hacked early in 2013 and the names, e-mail addresses, and plaintext passwords for 42 million accounts were exposed. Ouch. That has gotta sting.

Ars Technica reports that "The cache of personal information was found on the same servers that housed tens of millions of records stolen in separate hacks on sites including Adobe, PR Newswire, and the National White Collar Crime Center." An official from Cupid Media explained that the hack appeared to be connected to "suspicious activity" that was detected on the site in January and officials say they believe they have notified all affected users, but those actions and explanations are likely to do little to appease users whose personal information has been compromised.

The Cupid Media hack will go down in history as one of the largest passcode breaches on record so far, a dubious distinction made even worse by the fact that the data was in plaintext, rather than a cryptographically protected format that requires significant effort to crack. Because many Internet users reuse the same passwords on multiple websites, a hack on this scale can give thieves instant access to tens of thousands of sensitive accounts tied to a user's e-mail address.

"Making matters worse," Ars Technica speculates, "many of the Cupid Media users are precisely the kinds of people who might be receptive to content frequently advertised in spam messages, including male enhancement products, services for singles, and diet pills."

And making matters even worse than that, a review of the Cupid Media user records that were exposed reveals that a significant portion of them were protected with weak passwords in the first place. More than 1.9 million accounts were protected with the password "123456." Another 1.2 million used "111111." How is it that, in this day and age, there are still people who think those are secure passwords? Have they never seen the Internet before?

Take note, online daters: the more random your password is, the safer it is. And please, please, never use the same password on multiple sites.

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Most daters are reluctant to reach out to someone of a different race on an online dating site, but will respond if they are approached first, according to a new study.

Although we think of ourselves as a post-racial society, the study showed clearly that the vast majority of online daters prefer to initiate contact with daters who share the same ethnic background. It seems most people feel comfortable dating, or at least reaching out to people with the same ethnic background. There's no clear data yet on why, though the assumption is that people expect to have less in common with others who don't share their heritage.

The data was different however, when daters were approached by someone outside their race. They were more likely to respond because someone else had reached out and said he/she was interested - in a sense, breaking the ice. Interestingly, these daters then would reciprocate - they were more likely to search and reach out to daters outside their race in future interactions. The lesson? It pays to make the first move.

Kevin Lewis, a researcher at University of California San Diego who headed the study told the New York Daily News, "We expect that someone from a different background wouldn't be interested in us. The willingness to reciprocate may tell us more about site users' 'real' preferences than their willingness to initiate contact."

The group most likely to initiate contact outside of their own race were white males. Asian women stood out too, as they were more willing to communicate with men outside of their race than within it. Once contacted by someone from another race, their exchanges went up 238%.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and researched over 126,000 OkCupid users to find out about their messaging preferences when it comes to dating outside of their race. They looked at messages sent between October and December of 2010. All identifying information related to OkCupid member messages was blocked, so that researchers only saw race, gender, and the timestamp of the messages in addition to the content.

Even though interracial marriages have increased significantly over the last 30 years according to the latest Pew research, with one in twelve marriages being mixed-race, we haven't known much about the behaviors and preferences of online daters and how many of them are open to dating outside of their race. This has been the first study to give insight to the early stages of a relationship in terms of race.

Most people are still calling Tinder the future of dating. But behind the scenes, Tinder is already looking at a future beyond the dating world.

At Disrupt Europe, Sean Rad, founder and CEO of the mobile dating app, acknowledged that the "unwritten context" of Tinder in its current form is romantic relationships, but he added that Tinder's foundational function - connecting two people when they express mutual interest in each other - is "a universal thing across friendships, across business, across anything." With that in mind, his goal is to turn Tinder into the solution for "every single problem you have when it comes to making a new relationship."

Wow. Someone might need to take his ego down a notch.

I'm kidding, of course, but there's no denying that goal is lofty. Is it too much of a stretch, or just the amount of stretch the industry needs?

Rad believes that the impact of social networks has been to allow users to improve existing relationships. Where they fall short is in making it easier to meet new people. Interactions on social networking sites and online dating sites have developed a "hunter/hunted" dynamic, he argues, in which hunters feel they have to hunt more aggressively and those who are hunted feel increasingly uncomfortable. That's no way to begin a relationship.

Rad hinted that Tinder may be facing a future in which it is more closely tied to real-world locations. Eventually, he said, users should be able to spot someone they want to meet in the same room and indicate their interest in connecting right then and there. That rapid-fire approach to introductions also brings up the question of superficiality, which Tinder is often accused of encouraging. Rad addressed the issue by saying it's something humans do anyway, and that at least while using Tinder, people have the opportunity to choose the optimal picture to "express themselves." He even went so far as to call Tinder less superficial than our everyday lives.

When questioned about Tinder's business model, Rad said the team is currently focused on product and user growth. They're also reviewing potential revenue options, including in-app purchases. The app sees 3.5 million matches and 350 million swipes per day (about 30% of which are swipes to the right that indicate interest). Over the course of its lifetime, the app has seen 30 billion swipes and 300 million matches total. Given Tinder's massive growth, it's unlikely the app will have trouble making money when it finally decides to take the plunge.

The number of Americans using Internet dating services has tripled over the last five years, says a detailed new survey by the Pew Internet Project. Based on interviews with 2,252 American adults, the survey also found a few ways in which dating in the Internet age differs for men and women.

Undesirable contact and outright harassment are considerably bigger issues for women who date online. 42% of female survey respondents say they've been subjected to unwanted approaches, compared to only 17% of men who say the same. The same goes for social networking sites, where 33% of women and only 19% of men say they've blocked someone who was making them feel uncomfortable.

Though those differences aren't insignificant, both sexes also have plenty in common. Men and women have similar success rates when dating online. 22% of online daters, regardless of gender, say they found a long-term relationship or a marriage using Internet dating services. Both men and women are also equally likely (54%) to complain about being misled by someone whose profile was deceptive.

And what the sexes really agree on is what they're actually using the Internet for: snooping. When Pew conducted its last major study on the role of the Internet in Americans' love lives, using search engines and social networking sites to keep tabs on exes and investigate future romantic prospects was not nearly the phenomenon it is now. That was back in 2005, before Facebook had officially become available to the general public and before smartphone usage had exploded.

Now, with those and many more technological innovations, it has become infinitely easier to get our snoop on. Just 11% of daters admitted to conducting online searches for information about dates in 2005. Now nearly a quarter of Internet users (24%) say they are guilty of researching dates and the number goes up (38%) if they're actively involved in the dating scene. 29% say they have searched online for information about someone they are currently dating or are considering dating, a number that was only 13% in 2005.

6 out of 10 Americans are now users of social networking services, which we have also turned into tools for stalking former flames. 1 in 3 say they've visited an ex-partner's profile to see what they've been up to. 30% of social network users who are active daters report using such services to collect intel on potential partners as well. For Internet users aged 18 to 29, that number jumps to 41%.

Like it or not, most of us have snooped at one point or another and it begs the question: which would we be more willing to give up, our ability to find new partners on the Internet, or our ability to find out about partners on the Internet?