Mate1.com 2016 Data Breach
ObscureIQ Breach Intelligence
High SeverityWebsite / service breach
Mate1 Dating Platform Breach (2016): 27 Million User Profiles Including Sexual Preferences, Religion & Drug Use Habits Exposed
Online dating platform.
Verified by ObscureIQ Intelligence
72/100Breach Risk Index
40Data Value
25Market Recency
512dSince Breach
Breach Intelligence Summary
Entity: Mate1.com · Actor: Unknown (sold on Hell forum for ~20 BTC) · Sources: 11 references
Attack: Misconfiguration
Profile: Platform · Online dating and matchmaking · General dating platform · Global
Timeline: Breach (2016-02-29) · Indexed (Dec 01, 2024) · Year (2016)
Exposure: 27.4M records · 23 fields: Activity History, Astrological Sign, Date of Birth, Education Information, Email Address, Ethnicity or Race, Financial Profile, Full Name, Gender, Geographic Location, Job Information, Lifestyle Habits, Parenting Preferences, Password, Physical & Lifestyle Profile, Political Views, Profile Bio, Relationship Status, Religion, Sexual Preferences, Travel Information, Username, Work Habits
Status: Confirmed
Executive Summary
Mate1.com, an international online dating site that claimed approximately 36.5 million users globally, suffered a data breach in approximately February 2016 when an attacker compromised Mate1.com's MySQL database server through what the attacker described as shell or command access to the server. The attacker subsequently posted an advertisement on the dark-web forum Hell offering the stolen data for sale at approximately 20 Bitcoin (approximately $8,700 at the time), and the data was confirmed to have been sold to at least one buyer. The hacker stated that the original dump contained approximately 40 million accounts and was reduced to approximately 27 million after the hacker removed bot accounts identified by a common password pattern. Mate1.com did not initially acknowledge the breach, and Motherboard's verification process confirmed that 498 of 500 sampled email addresses corresponded to actual Mate1.com accounts. The breach affected approximately 27.4 million subscribers based on records indexed by Have I Been Pwned and DataBreach.com. Compromised fields included email addresses, names, usernames, dates of birth, gender, sexual fetishes, drug use habits, drinking habits, smoking habits, political views, religion, ethnicities, income levels, job titles, education levels, parenting plans, fitness levels, physical attributes, geographic locations, relationship statuses, personal descriptions, astrological signs, travel habits, work habits, website activity records, and passwords stored in plaintext. The plaintext password storage represents a critical security failure that exposes the original credential values directly to anyone with access to the dataset, with no cryptographic protection of any kind. Independent verification by Troy Hunt confirmed the plaintext-password storage by testing Mate1.com's password-reset feature, which emailed the user's actual plaintext password rather than triggering a reset. For affected users, the practical risk profile is among the most severe in the dating-platform breach corpus because of the unusually broad and sensitive field set combined with plaintext password exposure. The combination of name, email, date of birth, geographic location, job title, income level, and political and religious views creates substantial identity-fraud, employment-targeting, and discrimination risk. The exposure of sexual fetishes, drug use habits, and political views creates targeted harassment, doxxing, and extortion risk that varies significantly across user populations. Affected users may face employment, relationship, and family consequences depending on which fields are most sensitive in their personal context. The plaintext password exposure means that any account where the user reused the Mate1.com password is fully compromised. Affected users who receive extortion attempts should not pay ransom demands because payment does not stop further extortion. Users should change all reused passwords immediately, enable two-factor authentication where available, document any extortion communications, and report extortion attempts to law enforcement. Because Mate1.com did not require email verification at account creation, individuals who find their email address in the dataset but who do not recall ever creating a Mate1.com account may have had their email used by another party to create an account, which is itself a risk worth investigating.
ObscureIQ assessment: Exposure enables stalking, harassment, phishing, and romance scams. Dating-profile and communication data can also support identity linkage and reputational harm.
Breach Impact
The institutional impact on Mate1.com has been moderate given the platform's apparent unresponsiveness to the original breach disclosure and the limited public regulatory or civil-litigation activity relative to the breach's scale. The lack of acknowledgment and the documented persistence of plaintext-password storage represent a notable departure from contemporary industry breach-response practices. Reputational impact concentrated within the broader dating-platform sector, where the breach has been frequently cited alongside Ashley Madison and AdultFriendFinder as illustrating the elevated risk profile of dating-service data exposure. The breach's redistribution and indexing in late 2024 has renewed attention to the case as part of the broader 2024 to 2025 dating-platform breach redistribution wave.
About Mate1.com
Mate1.com was a large international online dating site that operated under the mate1.com domain and claimed approximately 36.5 million users globally at the time of the 2016 breach. The platform operated as a general-interest dating service with extensive profile-attribute matching that captured a substantially broader range of personal-attribute fields than mainstream dating platforms, including sexual fetishes, drug use habits, drinking habits, political views, religion, ethnicity, income levels, education levels, job titles, parenting plans, fitness levels, physical attributes, astrological signs, and travel and work habits. The platform did not require email verification at account creation, which meant that the user database included a substantial proportion of fake or unverified accounts in a pattern similar to that documented at Ashley Madison.
Why They Hold Your Data
Dating platforms collect profile data, photos, messages, account records, and subscription activity tied to online matchmaking workflows.
Recent Developments
Mate1.com initially did not acknowledge the breach when it was disclosed on the dark-web forum Hell in late February 2016, with no public statement appearing on Mate1.com's website at the time of the original Motherboard reporting. Independent verification by Have I Been Pwned founder Troy Hunt and security researchers documented that Mate1.com continued to store user passwords in plaintext for months after the breach, with the password-reset functionality returning the user's actual plaintext password by email rather than triggering a password-reset workflow. The case has been widely cited in dating-platform cybersecurity coverage as illustrating systemic data-protection failures at large general-interest dating services in the post-Ashley Madison period and as one of the leading examples of the persistent plaintext-password storage pattern in the dating-platform sector. The breach was redistributed and indexed by DataBreach.com on November 30, 2024.
Data Points Exposed
23 verified field types
Activity History
Astrological Sign
Date of Birth High
Education Information
Email Address
Ethnicity or Race High
Financial Profile High
Full Name High
Gender
Geographic Location
Job Information
Lifestyle Habits
Parenting Preferences
Password Critical
Physical & Lifestyle Profile
Political Views High
Profile Bio
Relationship Status
Religion High
Sexual Preferences High
Travel Information
Username
Work Habits
Field names are shown in full for clarity and search visibility. Canonical machine keys are emitted only in this page’s structured data.
Exploitation & Downstream Threats
Threat Activity:Critical
Primary downstream threats:
- Credential stuffing against reused passwords across other platforms
- Financial fraud using exposed financial profile data
- Identity verification bypass using name + date of birth combination
- Targeted phishing campaigns using exposed email addresses
- Doxxing risk from physical address exposure
- Employment-based social engineering using job and employer data
Threat vectors:
- Behavioural profiling & blackmail
- Identity verification bypass
- Credential fraud & spear-phishing
- Phishing, credential stuffing & account takeover
- Discriminatory targeting & hate crime enablement
- Loan fraud & targeted financial scams
- Name-based social engineering
- Profile enrichment
- Pattern-of-life analysis & physical surveillance
- Vishing & authority impersonation
- Credential stuffing & account takeover
- Physical description for fraud & imposture
- Social engineering context
- Detailed social engineering
- Targeted harassment & discrimination
- Blackmail & coercive extortion
- Cross-platform tracking & credential stuffing
Threat Actor: Unknown (sold on Hell forum for ~20 BTC)
Unknown (sold on Hell forum for ~20 BTC)
Misconfiguration
Attribution and method are based on available breach intelligence. Reported attack vector: Misconfiguration.
Recommended Actions
If you believe your information may be included:
Change Reused Passwords
Update this account and anywhere you reused the password; use a manager.
Enable MFA Everywhere
Turn on multi-factor authentication on email first, then financial accounts.
Report & Recover
If you spot misuse, start an official recovery plan and report fraud.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened in the Mate1.com breach?▾
Mate1.com, an international online dating site that claimed approximately 36.5 million users globally, suffered a data breach in approximately February 2016 when an attacker compromised Mate1.com's MySQL database server through what the attacker described as shell or command access to the server.…
What data was exposed?▾
Verified fields include Activity History, Astrological Sign, Date of Birth, Education Information, Email Address, Ethnicity or Race, Financial Profile, Full Name, Gender, Geographic Location, Job Information, Lifestyle Habits, Parenting Preferences, Password, Physical & Lifestyle Profile, Political Views, Profile Bio, Relationship Status, Religion, Sexual Preferences, Travel Information, Username, Work Habits.
What should I do if I was affected?▾
Change reused passwords, enable MFA, and (if identity or financial data is involved) freeze your credit and monitor your accounts.
Sources & References
Every claim on this page is traceable. This breach draws on:
Breach Index
Breach Index
Cross-source
9ghz
Cross-source
BreachAware
Cross-source
BreachDirectory
Cross-source
BreachForums_Official_Index
Cross-source
BreachNet.pw
Cross-source
Citadel.pw
Cross-source
Dehashed
Cross-source
HackNotice.com (+8)
ObscureIQ Intelligence
ObscureIQ proprietary analysis
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