FriendFinder Inc. owns multiple adult themed websites including AdultFriendFinder.com, Cams.com, Penthouse.com, Stripshow.com and more. If you have ever signed up for one of these accounts, even if it was briefly out of curiosity, it is recommended that you change your password. This is the company’s second breach in just over a year. Included in the 400 million breached accounts were 16 million deleted accounts.
What Was Stolen:
So far the data that has been leaked includes the following: usernames and passwords, VIP membership status, browser information, the IP address last used to log in to the site with, and if the user had paid for items.
In the company’s previous data breach in 2015, close to 4 million records were breached, which contained email addresses, usernames, passwords, birthdates and country, state, zip code, language, sex, and race.
Protect Yourself
This event comes in the wake of the Yahoo Data Breach that affected 500 million users, as well as Dropbox exposing 68 million user credentials. This just goes to show that cybercriminals are going after big companies that store a lot of personal information about their customers. The more personal information a cybercriminal can collect about an individual, the easier it becomes for them to commit identity theft. These “bundles” of data are a high commodity on the black market, as the data from these types of breaches can be sold for a higher amount of money because of the abundance of detailed information they contain.
If you have ever signed up for one of these accounts, even if it was out of curiosity and you deleted it shortly after, your data could be at risk.
- Firstly, if you still have an active account on one of these websites, go change your password immediately.
- Secondly, if you use the same username and password across other websites, change those immediately as well. Cybercriminals will try to use leaked passwords on multiple websites counting on users reusing passwords.
Data breaches may seem scary these days because a lot of it seems out of our control. However, there’s more that you can control than you think. You can read our comprehensive new guide about identity theft to help educate yourself and stay protected.