People who have had accounts on a number of adult websites over the last 20 years could be in for a bit of an embarrassment.
LeakedSource.com reports the Friend Finder Network, which operates AdultFriendFinder.com, a self-described “sex and swinger” match service, has suffered a massive data breach.
It reports AdultFriendFinder.com, by itself, suffered a hack of 339 million accounts, including 15 million that had been deleted. Accounts were also compromised on Cams.com, Stripshow.com, iCams.com, and Penthouse.com.
'Biggest we've ever seen'
Leaked Source reports the hack occurred last month and is “by far the largest data breach we have ever seen.” It also says 99% of account passwords were not encrypted, but visible in plain text.
The potential for social disruption is high, since this is exactly what happened when the cheating website Ashley Madison was hacked last year. Perhaps with that experience in mind, the staff at Leaked Source said it has decided not to make the leaked data from the latest batch of adult sites searchable.
In the case of the Ashley Madison hack, the attackers purposefully singled out the site because it promoted extra-marital affairs. The hackers also said they wanted to expose what they said was a lie, claiming the site did not delete accounts, even though consumers paid extra to have their information removed.
Deleted accounts weren't deleted
Leaked Source said it found something similar among the hacked Friend Finder data. It said there were more than 15 million accounts with an email in the format of email@address.com@deleted1.com.
“We've seen this situation many times before and it likely means these were users who tried to delete their account but the data is obviously still kept around because you know, we're looking at it,” Leaked Source writes.
Leaked Source raises the possibility that the emails were modified by Friend Finder personnel, to prevent their removal. The company said the breach of over 400 million accounts makes it the largest on record, even beating the MySpace breach, which compromised 360 million accounts. It also says it's the second Friend Finder breach in two years, with the first occurring in May 2015.