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The hacking of large company databases for personal and compromising information is on the rise. First it was giant retailer Target, then entertainment studio Sony, followed by a few of the major insurance companies - and it has been reported that as many as 200 companies have been hacked in the last few years, its victims their own customers and employees.

But this week, in perhaps the most personal of the recent data hacks, dating website Adult Friend Finder (a service for those looking for casual friendships and sexual hook-ups), has announced that its customer data has also been breached.

Channel 4 News in the UK has reported that the personal information of 3.9 million of AdultFriendFinder.com’s members was discovered in an online forum for hackers, including users’ sexual preferences, e-mail addresses, dates of birth and, in some cases, whether they were looking to cheat on their spouses. The company has notified law enforcement agencies, but said that no financial or password information seems to have been stolen.

AdultFriendFinder is different from traditional dating sites in that the information people provide is much more personal. When a user signs up, the services asks him/ her to detail his interests and, based on those criteria, matches people for sexual encounters. The site, which boasts 64 million members, claims to have "helped millions of people find traditional partners, swinger groups, threesomes, and a variety of other alternative partners."

So customers who joined the website to anonymously post their sexual preferences for hook-ups might now face being exposed to family members, co-workers, bosses, and even spouses or partners, compromising their personal lives.

One controversial hacker took advantage of the now-exposed data to identify over Twitter and personally name four different men who were using the dating site – including one who was married. Because the data is now accessible to anyone, many more people could be publicly shamed as a result.

According to CNN Money: “The breach was carried out by a hacker who goes by the moniker ROR[RG]. In an online hacker forum, he said he blackmailed Adult FriendFinder, telling the site he would expose the data online unless the company paid him $100,000.”

"Until the investigation is completed, it will be difficult to determine with certainty the full scope of the incident, but we will continue to work vigilantly to address this potential issue and will provide updates as we learn more from our investigation," FriendFinder's statement said.

According to The Wall Street Journal, researchers noted that as awareness of the breach spread on Friday May 22nd, more copies of the files were appearing online, meaning more people potentially had access to the data.

Dating in China just got a whole lot harder. The country's internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, has closed down 128 online dating sites suspected of violating regulations and supplying false information.

The websites were shut down for a lengthy list of allegations, including organized prostitution, disseminating pornographic images, promoting vulgar content, allowing user information to be distributed illegally, and not having complete sets of registration records.

This crackdown comes after the CAC joined forces with several government agencies – including the Ministry of Public Security, the All-China Women's Federation, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs – to conduct a clean-up operation. The offensive began in February, driven primarily by tips from the public. Users are still encouraged to report illegal websites through hotlines, e-mail or mobile apps.

"The operation has achieved a good result. It acted as a deterrent to violators and also had positive impact on the industry's development," said the CAC in a statement. With the way paved, the plan is to create guidelines to ensure dating sites provide fair and honest service.

Other dating services have expressed support, saying the new policies will be good for the industry's long-term development. Wu Linguang, CEO of leading Chinese dating site Jiayuan.com, has come out in favor. The CEOs of Baihe.com and Youyuan.com have also both expressed support for the campaign.

Aside from targeting prostitution and fraudulent practices by service providers, the CAC's crusade tackled the issue of authenticity. Some services were accused of failing to enforce controversial 2012 regulations requiring users to give their real names and national identification numbers upon registration. These sites have been asked to enforce real-name registration to protect users against dishonesty and scammers.

Some believe these are advantageous moves that will help maintain a fair and competitive online market, and improve legal consciousness. Others are less convinced by the ostensible motives.

Chinese internet users have poked fun at the crackdown and questioned its intentions. Critics claim campaigns purporting to safeguard moral standards and related laws are merely a pretext for political censorship.

This is not the first time China has made such a bold move. Last year, in a similar effort to stamp out prostitution and pornography, the country closed nearly 1.8 million social networking and instant messaging accounts.

Not the first time, and likely not the last.

Dating app Clover analyzed data from 200,000 users of its service to find out where people like to go on a first date. Not surprisingly – Starbucks Coffee Chains took the number one spot.

What was surprising about the study was that bars and other popular coffee shops didn’t really figure into the top choices. According to Clover, their users chose restaurants overall, though perhaps meeting for a drink at a restaurant is preferable for most first dates instead of the local bar. After all, if it’s going well – then you can just move on to dinner.

But as it turns out, well-known chain restaurants are among the most popular places to meet a date, as opposed to a local café or even a bar. (It doesn’t pay to be a little more creative.) Chains including In-N-Out, Olive Garden, and Red Lobster are among the top 30 places to meet a first date, according to Clover. Chipotle claimed the number two spot behind Starbucks, beating out Cheesecake Factory at number four and Peet’s Coffee and Tea at number fifteen.

Women differ from men by where they would like to meet for that first date. Fifty-two percent would rather meet at a coffee shop, as opposed to only 35% who prefer to meet at a restaurant. Perhaps because they don’t want to get stuck for a meal that could take hours with someone they aren’t especially attracted to. On the other hand, men are far more willing to take their chances, or at least enjoy a good meal as long as they are on a date. Fifty-one percent of men prefer to meet at restaurants, as opposed to 31% who prefer coffee shops. Surprisingly, neither men or women find bars to be good first date places. Only 18% of men and 13% of women would choose to meet at a bar.

While Starbucks far outweighs any other coffee shop on the list when it comes to preferable meeting places, restaurants do tend to differ according to age. Eighteen to twenty-four year-olds, typically with the lowest discretionary income, chose Chipotle as their number one choice. Twenty-five to thirty-four year-olds preferred Cheesecake Factory, while 35 and older chose The Olive Garden.

It should be noted that Clover is an “on-demand” dating app, which allows users to select a nearby location through the app to meet for a first date. The data was gathered through user preferences in the app.

Dating app Coffee Meets Bagel has taken a back seat to the spectacular rise of Tinder the past few years. This however has not daunted the company’s founders, three sisters who left their cushy corporate jobs to fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams. (Not to mention, they wanted to create a dating app that they would like to use!)

Now, the company has taken its carefully executed roll-out in the U.S. and is expanding internationally. Hong Kong was the first place outside of the U.S. where the service was launched.

CMB takes its operations seriously. Instead of giving in to the “more is more” trend in dating - offering unlimited looks at profiles and encouraging users to choose “yes” or “no” in a matter of seconds – this dating app offers users one match per day. And you have 24 hours to mull it over, choosing to like or pass. If you like, you have a week to make a real date happen through the app’s private chat line, or it’s on to the next. In other words, it forces users to carefully consider and follow through, instead of swiping at will and sending a few messages that never lead to a date.

Facebook is a key platform in spreading interest in the app overseas, since Hong Kong users (according to a recent article in Forbes) have an average of 768 Facebook friends each, eight times the worldwide standard. Also, Hong Kong is a highly social city, although people spend more time at work than they do trying to meet people to date. It made for the perfect place to launch the dating app’s international roll-out.

Co-Founder Dawoon Kang lived in Hong Kong for three years, experiencing the dating scene for herself. (She and her current boyfriend met over CMB). “Hong Kong is a very young, vibrant city full of ambitious singles in their 20s and 30s who are eager to meet new people but have very little time for it. Coffee Meets Bagel was designed with these young professionals in mind, which made Hong Kong our perfect market – and our initial results show that,” she told Forbes.

On average, Hong Kong users are logging in 4.3 times per day (33% more than U.S. members), and 72% log in each day to check their matches. Like in the U.S., more CMB members are female – 62% of the Hong Kong user base are women, although there are more single men overall in China.

The service launched in Hong Kong on March 4^th, and before the month was over, the company had made 3,000 connections. According to Kang, CMB has also achieved consistent 20 percent week on week growth.

Dating website Plenty of Fish (POF) has been making headlines recently for its longevity and user milestones, as well as its recent disclosure of financial information about the company. But thanks to the new anti-spam law in Canada, POF now has an unwanted headline that they have to deal with - the popular dating website has been ordered to pay $48,000 in fines for its email practices.

Canadians complained of Plenty of Fish’s marketing tactics, which launched an investigation by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the Competition Bureau into the company’s practices. Specifically, the agencies examined how the company handles commercial emails to subscribers.

According to the disgruntled users, POF sent them commercial messages without a noticeable “opt out” or “unsubscribe” feature. One of the key requirements in the law is that each commercial email contain an unsubscribe mechanism to allow recipients to opt-out at any time. Also, according to the wording of the law, the unsubscribe feature has to be prominently displayed and “readily performed.”

Plenty of Fish agreed to paying a $48,000 penalty and developing a new compliance program to address its problematic email practices. The compliance program will include training and education for staff, as well as corporate policies and procedures regarding email marketing.

The new anti-spam law has been in effect since last year, but the Canadian agencies have had their challenges in enforcing it because of how vast and pervasive the problem of spamming seems to be. Millions of spam emails are sent every day by spammers from all over the world. Experts argued that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and the Competition Bureau were not equipped to handle such a pervasive issue.

The agencies however, are proving the critics wrong. The Competition Bureau recently alleged that rental car companies Budget and Avis engaged in false and misleading advertising when they failed to disclose numerous additional fees as part of their car rental promotions, including their email promotions. The Bureau is seeking $30 million in fines and reimbursement to customers. And the CRTC discovered that Compu-Finder, a Quebec-based corporate training company, sent commercial emails without consent and like POF, without proper unsubscribe mechanisms. The company was hit with a $1.1 million penalty.

CRTC notes in a press release that POF did not argue with the fine or the accusation, and hopes that by example, other companies will be inspired to change their own email spamming tactics. As for POF, the company continues to grow its subscriber base despite its setbacks, recently announcing its user base has grown to 100 million worldwide.

IAC, the company who is the majority stakeholder in popular dating app Tinder, no longer wants Sean Rad in the driver’s seat. As of late March, the company has named the new CEO who will be taking his place: Christopher Payne.

Payne previously worked for eBay as a senior vice president in the company’s marketplaces division, where he was responsible for the North American market. He also founded Positronic, a search technology company, which eBay acquired in 2008. Before that, he worked for 13 years at Microsoft, including heading its search unit, which was then called Windows Search Live.

“Christopher brings invaluable experience running consumer technology businesses that operate at massive scale,” Mr. Rad said in a statement.

But the change might not be completely embraced by Rad, who was embroiled in a very public sexual harassment lawsuit brought about by former employee Whitney Wolfe. They settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, and she has now launched a new dating app of her own that directly competes with Tinder. Rad will remain President of Tinder and retains a seat on the company’s board. According to reports, he will still be in charge of product and marketing, but Payne will take over everything else.

The spotlight that has been on Rad the past few years has not been flattering, and the most recent scrutiny has come as a result of the new premium service Tinder Plus, which is costing as much as $19.99 US per month for two additional features. Users have asked to be able to use Tinder in multiple cities, as well as to “go back” and swipe right on matches they’d previously turned down. The new service offers these features for a price – but if you want to just keep the basic free service, the company has also put limits on the amount of swiping you can do in a 24-hour period. This caused controversy when it launched in the UK, and the app’s rating in the iTunes store went down to one and a half stars as a result.

Another controversial decision was pricing for the new service, which is based on age. For users under 30, Tinder Plus costs $9.99 per month, but for those 30 and older, it goes up to $19.99, and even more in European countries. Rad says a lot of research went into the pricing, and he stands by what he says customers are willing to pay.

Tinder also plans to launch an ad product, but has not disclosed how this will affect the service or user’s experience. Until now, advertising revenue has come from product placement, but the app has a lot of valuable user information for marketing departments to tap into.

IAC hopes that Payne can refocus Tinder’s business goals and help it grow into a more profitable as well as popular company.

Read our review of Tinder to find out more about this popular dating app.