Good afternoon and happy Valentine’s Day! If you’re looking to hop on dating apps to find the love of your life today, you should probably chill for a bit.
This morning, Coffee Meets Bagel–a popular dating app–announced a data breach to its users via email. It’s not clear how many accounts were impacted and the company says hackers only gained information from users who were on the app before May 2018.
Only users’ names and emails were compromised. Financial information or passwords weren’t hacked since the company doesn’t store those details on its users.
In an awkwardly timed announcement, the company didn’t go into extreme detail about the particulars of the breach, but it did lay out a plan to protect its users’ information moving forward and said it will seek the efforts of “forensic security experts” to take a look at the nuts and bolts of the company’s infrastructure. It’s also monitoring for more suspicious activity on the platform.
Pro tip: Coffee Meets Bagel should send the data breach notice to dating app users before Valentine’s Day. pic.twitter.com/l9PVfxNcsW
— Upma (@upmaaa) February 14, 2019
Irony and jokes aside, the Coffee Meets Bagel situation is a part of an even bigger data breach where details of over 600 million accounts are now up for sale on the dark web for Bitcoin. Other platforms including HauteLook, Dubsmash, MyFitnessPal, and more were involved as well.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of a dating app not protecting its users’ information. This week, TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker reported that several users of OKCupid had their accounts breached. Hackers gained access to passwords and even changed email addresses on file. Whittaker also added that dating sites don’t even offer two-factor authentication…yikes.
Finding love is already a consistent, agonizing battle. Now users have to worry about their information being stolen while looking for companionship.