Users of dating site, Plenty of Fish (PoF) have had private information freely displayed on their dating profiles after a security breach. PoF reportedly has around 150 million registered users worldwide. The app has, however, issued a patch for its mobile app to fix this issue.
But this came after a security researcher found it was leaking information that users set to “private” on their profiles.
The researchers, The App Analyst discovered that both the Android and iOS apps were vulnerable. The PoF web application also had this issue.
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The affected information includes the first names and postal ZIP codes of PoF users, putting them at risk, not just online, but in real life too.
Although the site says that certain information will not be displayed on a user’s profile, this information is still accessible via the app’s API using freely available tools.
“PoF was quite responsive and diligent with regards to rolling out a fix for revealing a user’s home ZIP code,” the App Analyst wrote in a blog post regarding their findings.
When signing up on the dating site, PoF asks prospective users to provide a selection of personal data. This is to help find the most suitable romantic matches for them. This information includes a home ZIP code to make sure local users can be shown.
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PoF Says Privacy Concerns No Longer Present
This news is also alarming for users as it comes after several high-profile incidents in which users of gay dating app Grindr were lured into false meetings which have seen them beaten and robbed.
PoF says it has confirmed the privacy concerns are no longer present in the app’s API. Users may, however, still update their profiles and display preferences in order to ensure no personal information is at risk.
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