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The personal details of millions who signed up to a sex hook-up website in the past 20 years have been exposed in one of the largest ever data breaches.

The email addresses and passwords of 412 million accounts have been leaked after the meet-up website AdultFriendFinder and sister sites were hacked. At least 5.2 million UK email addresses were stolen in the breach, which also included the date of last visit, browser information, some purchasing patterns.

AdultFriendFinder describes itself as “one of the world’s largest sex hook-up” websites, with more than 40 million active users. The hack, against its parent company Friend Finder Networks, also involved data from Cams, a live video sex site, and Penthouse, an internet porn site that was sold in February.

The attack, discovered by hack monitoring site Leaked Source, occurred in October and is one of the biggest on record, following closely behind Yahoo, which recently reported the loss of half a billion users’ details. It eclipses last year’s Ashley Madison hack, in which the personal information and sexual preferences of 37 million people were exposed.

Weak and outdated website security allowed cyber criminals to access the AdultFriendFinder information, Leaked Source said. The passwords and usernames were stored in a way that is easily decoded, meaning 99 per cent of those stolen were legible to the hackers. (más…)