In case you haven’t seen the news, or social media trending topics lately – the hookup site, Adult Friend Finder, was part of a breach. A quick scan of some of the released emails in the Adult Friend Finder breach, along with a correlation to Facebook accounts are turning up active profiles of married men. This could obviously lead to future black mail, but what are some of the concerns, non-married users of the site might have?
A Brief History of The Adult Friend Finder Breach
History? But, didn’t you say this just happened? Actually, the adult friend finder database appears to have been available for trade for well over a year now… despite it just hitting news outlets now. The initial breach was reported to be carried out by [ROR]RG in which he was trying to extort $100,000 from the owners of Adult Friend Finder. During this breach there was around 4 Million compromised accounts. This sounds like a lot, but is actually 100x less than the latest breach.
What Does The Adult Friend Finder Breach Mean To Me?
So, you’re not married and not worried about being blackmailed? That relieves at least one worry. What about compromised passwords? Adult Friend Finder has stated that they do not believe that password data has been compromised…. at least in this breach. If you want to find out if you were part of the last Adult Friend Finder breach, you can check out haveibeenpwnd.com.
The biggest concern at this point would be an increase in SPAM or Phishing attempts on whatever email you used for the site. My prediction is that we will see some Adult Friend Finder specific phishing campaigns that will be spun up from the massive (412 million) list of registered email accounts.
Just to be on the safe side, I would change up my passwords… this is simple if you are using password management software. I’ve harped on the importance of password management before on my security site, so I won’t duplicate my efforts here.
The Bottom Line
Realistically, if you are worried about being exposed as a member of one of these sites, it’s probably safer to just not sign up. However, if you just can’t help yourself, you should use some sort of secondary email that isn’t traced back to you along with password management to make it easier to stay safe…. I can’t believe I just advocated signing up to a hookup site with a burner email on my company’s website…. I think with that, this is a good place to end. Let me know your thoughts on the Adult Friend Finder breach in the comments.
