Relationships

Gay dating app Manhunt says that it was hacked in February of this year, and the personal data of a portion of its users was exposed. 

A hacker caused the data breach according to a statement submitted by the company to the Washington State Attorney General. Manhunt maintains that the hacker “downloaded the usernames, email addresses and passwords for a subset of our users in early February 2021,” according to The Advocate. 

Manhunt has over 6 million users, and about 7,700 of its users who reside in Washington had their data stolen according to the statement. In total, the company’s attorney says about 11 percent of Manhunt users were affected by the breach.

Dating app Hinge is now offering prompts via their video chat feature to help guide virtual daters towards a more engaging, fun conversation.

According to The Zoe Report, once you start chatting with someone on Hinge, the new feature will let one of you swipe through prompts to ask during the call. There are eight main types of prompts to choose, starting with The Warm-Up (which are ice-breakers to get you started). Hinge then moves on to Dive in Deep (which gets into personal questions), Behind the Scenes (insight into your daily life and habits), Not So Serious (“fun and out-of-the-box” questions), Dim the Lights (if you’re looking to get romantic), Underrated or Overrated (opinions on some more controversial or polarizing subjects), and finally Let’s Delete Hinge. The last one is assuming the call is going well and you’re going to take things offline.

Hinge has called this new offering a “virtual vibe check” so daters don’t feel the pressure to meet someone in person before having a conversation and getting a sense of who they are.

Image: OkCUpid

OkCupid has launched a new profile badge for users to advertise their views on climate change in honor of Earth Day.

The dating app company will prompt its users with the question: “Are you concerned about climate change & want a profile badge to show it’s important to you?” For those who choose to answer in the affirmative, a Climate Change Advocate badge will be automatically added to their profile. 

In addition, these users will be featured in the Climate Change Stack (categories where users can easily search potential matches according to interests), and OkCupid also plans to donate $1 per profile badge to EarthDay.org, up to $25,000. EarthDay.org is the world’s largest recruiter of for the environmental movement, which began on the first Earth Day in 1970. 

WooPlus, an inclusive dating app for curvy people, is testing out its new live feature ‘Love Advisor,’ which aims to help its users find love and curb bad behaviors like ghosting and endless messaging that leads nowhere, according to the company’s press release.

Love Advisor is a live support feature that will help users better communicate when they are using the app, offering real-time guidance so they can avoid some common dating pitfalls. 

According to the press release, Love Advisor will provide:

Dating app Grindr announced the premiere of its new comedy special called Gag Reflex, featuring a lineup of up-and-coming LGBTQ comedians, who share stories of dating and the queer experience.

The special originally aired as a livestream on April 1st on YouTube and the Grindr app, and is now available to watch anytime on YouTube. According to Variety, the featured comedians include Joel Kim Booster (NBC’s Sunnyside, Hulu’s Shrill), Sydnee Washington (Broad City), Jay Jurden (The Tonight Show), Jaye McBride and Zach Zimmerman.

Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona just signed into law a bill that requires online dating companies to inform their users when they have communicated with potential scammers, according to a report from Fox 10 News.

The bill HB2396 was sponsored by Republican lawmaker Regina Cobb of Kingman, Arizona, and requires dating services to inform its members if someone they had been in contact with was banned for a suspected scam, in an effort to reduce abusive and criminal activity on dating apps. These companies were previously prohibited from doing so.

The law requires the notice to be sent my mail or email, and according to Fox News 10 in Phoenix, it also provides immunity for dating app companies to prevent them from being sued.