General News

One of the world's largest free online dating sites, PlentyOfFish.com, has been hacked. The site released the following official statement:

On January 18th, after days of countless and unsuccessful attempts, a hacker gained access to Plentyoffish.com database. We are aware from our logs that 345 accounts were successfully exported. Hackers attempted to negotiate with Plentyoffish to "hire" them as a security team. If Plentyoffish failed to cooperate, hackers threatened to release hacked accounts to the press.

The breach was sealed in minutes and the Plentyoffish team had spent several days testing its systems to ensure no other vulnerabilities were found. Several security measures, including forced password reset, had been imposed. Plentyoffish is bringing on several security companies to perform an external security audit, and will take all measures necessary to make sure our users are safe.

In an extremely strange and rambling blog post, PlentyOfFish CEO Markus Frind tells his side of the story. He describes the event as an "an incredibly well planned and sophisticated attack," and says that the man responsible, a 23 year old hacker named Chris Russo who allegedly also hacked the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay, harassed his wife and blamed the security breach on "the Russians." According to the post, Frind's wife received a call from Russo saying that PlentyOfFish had been hacked, and that "Russians have taken over his computer and are trying to kill him, and his life is in extreme danger and they are currently downloading plentyoffish's database." Frind says that he was listening in the background, closed the security breach, and immediately ordered an investigation.

Frind goes on to say that Russo demanded that he fly to either Argentina or Washington, D.C. in order to stop "the attacks from the Russians," who supposedly had access to their bank accounts and were looking to steal $30 million from a string of dating sites. According to Frind, Russo also claimed that 5 or 6 other dating sites had been breached, and then gave Frind the administrative password for eHarmony.com to prove the validity of his claim.

Reactions to the hack have been strong. Dave Evans, an analyst who follows the online dating industry, told CTV News that Frind is "a self-made millionaire who's a total hardcore geek and has built most of the site himself." He continues to express disappointment, saying that Frind "hasn't spent evidently any time on securing passwords" and calling his actions "a lack of respect for your members."

In the same article, PlentyOfFish forum user fnord is quoted as saying "The site owner didn't think it was important to notify the users...but did find it important enough to go off on a crazed diatribe on his personal blog. Despite claiming to have plugged the security hole, Plenty of Fish is still sending out passwords in plain text, which is just this side of just posting them on the Internet for everyone to see." User QuasarDJ adds "I have grave concerns about the security of my personal information on the Plenty of Fish site and I've yet to see even the most simple updates to guard against these problems."

While the convoluted story has yet to be completely confirmed, it's clear that a hack of PlentyOfFish has occurred and that it's in the best interest of all members to change their username, email, and password combinations, particularly if they are also used on other sites.

For more information on this dating site you can read our review of PlentyofFish.

Friends Reunited Dating is a large dating service based in the UK with over 1.6 million members. They are celebrating the upcoming Valentine's Day by offering a voucher code that gives members up to a 30% discount on subscriptions. To receive this discount use:

Voucher Code: FLOWER14

This code is valid from the 1st of February 2011 and expires on the 15th of February 2011. When you use this code you will receive 10% off a 1 month subscription, 20% off of a 3 month subscription or 30% off a 6 month subscription.

For more information on this popular United Kingdom dating site, please read our review of Friends Reunited Dating.

Forget those old-school dating websites that have you create your own profile. Now, a dating website will do it for you, whether you like it or not.

Last week, Facebook filed a cease-and-desist letter to Gotham Dating Partners, Inc., saying their plans to collect public data from sites like Facebook to create online profiles violates Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Gotham plans to collect information from various sources besides Facebook, according to Damon Jordan, vice-president of marketing for Gotham. They will include data from government census, mailing lists, and marriage and divorce records. Once the information is posted, a person can delete or update his own profile for free. But if they want to contact someone else, there is a fee.

And if their Facebook profile lists them as "single", they will automatically be added to Gotham's dating sites. Gotham's dating site roster includes UglyPeopleDate.com, PrisonHookup.com, and MarryMeFirst.com, among others.

They plan to relaunch on February 14th.

Jordan commented last week to news website the Star, "you can virtually do everything on our sites that you can do on Facebook. On Valentine's Day, you will be able to do that, and some. The value of Facebook is in the information, via membership, that it has on the public. They fear they won't have value anymore. Who would invest in a company going public sometime this year, for value that another company has, with significantly less overhead."

In any case, if you want to ensure your information stays private, you may want to make sure your profile is deleted from Gotham's site. And remove your Facebook relationship status.

Here is some exciting news for singles interested in trying out an online dating site to find a partner.

To celebrate Saint Valentine's Day which is right around the corner, Lavalife will be giving a 30 day free trial to any new user who signs up within the month of February. This free trial gives you unlimited access to Lavalife and all the features they offer, and all without a credit card. This includes sending and receiving unlimited emails and instant message plus you can find out who has viewed your profile. This 30 day free trial is the same as purchasing a one month membership from them.

February is the busiest month in the year for dating sites. When you have a professional high quality dating site like Lavalife giving away 30 day memberships to new users you can expect this service to be VERY BUSY. If you are single, this is one service I would definitely try out.

There are several things that makes Lavalife stand out among the other dating services. One of the main things is they offer 3 dating communities within the site. So if you are searching for a simple date, long term relationship, or an intimate encounter you can join 1 or more of these communities in Lavalife and find singles looking for the same type of relationships.

To find out more about this online dating site, check out our Lavalife review.

According to NBC, the coupon site Groupon and the speed dating site HurryDate have teamed up to break the Guinness world record for the largest speed dating event. This will hopefully happen at the new Paris Club in Chicago on February 8th, 2011 from 7pm to 11pm.

The event will be hosted by B-96 radio personality Showbiz Shelly. 500 tickets (250 for women and 250 for men) are being made available for purchase on Groupon for $40 each. The speed dating event will be setup in such a way that the women will sit and the men will move from table to table for 25, 3 minute speed dates. Once the main event is finished a hosted bar party will commence where the party goers can then talk further with anyone who peaked their interest.

To find out more about this speed dating service, please read our review of HurryDate.

A woman’s tears can stop men in their tracks, at least when it comes to sex.

Israeli researchers found that a chemical in a woman’s tears significantly lowers men’s testosterone levels, which could affect how attractive they find a woman and their level of sexual arousal.

Researcher Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute in Israel specializes in the study of pheromones, or biochemical signaling agents, and admits that so far most pheromone studies have focused on human sweat.

“But sweat is not the only way humans emit chemicals, and that’s what led us to consider tears,” Sobel said.

Previous research had shown that tears resulting from emotional reactions (sadness or fear) contained 25 percent more proteins than so-called “cleansing tears” we get from chopping onions or dusting. The six women used in the study watched their favorite tear-jerker films, and scooped their tears into vials which were then handed to 50 male participants.

Half the men were given saline solution vials and the other half actual tears, and were then asked to smell. Though the participants couldn’t tell the difference between saline and real tears, the ones sniffing tears showed physiological and psychological changes.

In one experiment, the male participants were shown images of women. The men who sniffed tears found the images less sexually attractive than the men who sniffed saline. In another experiment, researchers measured saliva samples and found that testosterone levels were lower in the men who sniffed tears.

The researchers originally set out to study the tears of both men and women, but when they advertised for subjects who were able to cry easily, they obtained an overwhelming response from women and no response from men.