Users Complain of Account Hacks, But OkCupid Denies a Data Breach

Zack Whittaker reports via TechCrunch: A reader contacted TechCrunch after his [OkCupid] account was hacked. The reader, who did not want to be named, said the hacker broke in and changed his password, locking him out of his account. Worse, they changed his email address on file, preventing him from resetting his password. OkCupid didn't send an email to confirm the address change -- it just blindly accepted the change. 'Unfortunately, we're not able to provide any details about accounts not connected to your email address,' said OkCupid's customer service in response to his complaint, which he forwarded to TechCrunch. Then, the hacker started harassing him strange text messages from his phone number that was lifted from one of his private messages. It wasn't an isolated case. We found several cases of people saying their OkCupid account had been hacked.

But several users couldn't explain how their passwords -- unique to OkCupid and not used on any other app or site -- were inexplicably obtained. 'There has been no security breach at OkCupid,' said Natalie Sawyer, a spokesperson for OkCupid. 'All websites constantly experience account takeover attempts. There has been no increase in account takeovers on OkCupid.' Even on OkCupid's own support pages, the company says that account takeovers often happen because someone has an account owner's login information. 'If you use the same password on several different sites or services, then your accounts on all of them have the potential to be taken over if one site has a security breach,' says the support page. In fact, when we checked, OkCupid was just one of many major dating sites -- like Match, PlentyOfFish, Zoosk, Badoo, JDate, and eHarmony -- that didn't use two-factor authentication at all.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.