Cupid Media exposed 254,000 Australian lonely hearts

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/cupid-media-exposed-254000-australian-lonely-hearts-20140625-zskua.html

By Ben Grubb
SMH.com.au
June 25, 2014

Australian online dating company Cupid Media breached the Privacy Act by 
failing to take reasonable steps to secure the personal information of 
254,000 Australians held on its dating websites, the privacy commissioner 
has found.

Cupid, run out of Southport on the Gold Coast, operates more than 35 niche 
dating websites based on users' personal profile including ethnicity, 
religion and location. In January last year, hackers gained unauthorised 
access to Cupid web servers and stole the personal information of what was 
reported to be 42 million users across the globe.

The 42 million figure was, however, disputed by Cupid managing director 
Andrew Bolton.  When the breach was made public in November he said the 
number of ''active members'' affected was ''considerably less than 42 
million''. How many non-active members details were breached was never 
disclosed.

Before Wednesday the number of Australians exposed was also unknown until 
it was revealed by the Privacy Commissioner. The personal information 
included full name, date of birth, email addresses and passwords.

[...]



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