Users of a dating app OkCupid claim data breach ahead of Valentine's day

According to a report, hackers have allegedly compromised some user accounts of a dating service OkCupid. The company has denied any such hack attempt on its users. The report has emerged just before February 14 (Valentine's day) and it has sparked the debate around safety, security and privacy concerns when it comes to online dating apps and services.

TechCrunch's report cited a user who told the publication that some hacker broke in his account and changed the password. Not just that, even the email address on the database was changed, which prevented the user from resetting his password.

In what could be even more shocking is that the hacker started harassing the owner with strange text messages from his phone number obtained from his private messages.

However, this is not the first case. Many users have reported that their OkCupid account had been compromised. However, OkCupid has denied the claim made by the user and emphasized that there has been no security breach at the company.

OkCupid said that account takeovers are common and happen when someone has an account owner’s login information. If one uses the same password on several different sites or services, all of them have the potential to be compromised if one faces a security breach.

READ | As Valentine's day nears, Samsung is matching singles based on what's inside their fridge

“There has been no security breach at OkCupid. All websites constantly experience account takeover attempts. There has been no increase in account takeovers on OkCupid,” Natalie Sawyer, a spokesperson of OkCupid told TechCrunch.

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Samsung recently launched a new Tinder-like dating app called Refridgerdating, which is compatible with Samsung's Family Hub Refrigerator. Since it takes photos of shelves, all you have to do is swipe in order to match with other "Refridgerdaters" based on what they have inside their fridge.

In related news, Facebook initially announced plans to foray into online dating place at the company's F8 developer conference last year. However, we have no information on when will it be available to all users in India.

(With ANI inputs)