Dating sites are often prime targets for hackers looking for personal information to steal, and a site that boasts elitism and just a little bit of egotism makes an inviting target. Such is the case for beautifulpeople.com, which was the victim of a data breach resulting in the theft of over 1.1 million users’ data.

To make things just a little bit worse, it could have been prevented if Beautiful People were just a little more cautious with their security.

According to Wired, the hack was made possible by the database-management software, MongoDB, which uses blank default credentials. That is to say, users who don’t set up a password for their database would leave it unprotected, and among the unprotected databases was the user dataset for Beautiful People.

While the website was informed of its exposed database, its response was not fast enough and the entire dataset was stolen. This includes phone numbers, email addresses, and even salary information. However, Beautiful People says that no passwords or financial data were exposed.

Any users who have joined prior to July 2015 may have been affected by the data breach. Those who joined later in the month are safe, as the vulnerability was closed by then. Additionally, Beautiful People is notifying all impacted members, as they did when the vulnerability was originally found. The company is trying to excuse the breach, by stating it only affected a “test server,” but that does nothing to change the fact that private user information was stolen.

It’s important to note that the leaking of data is occurring now, even though the initial breach occurred months ago. In the delay, Beautiful People may have assumed that they stopped the security flaw in time, but it is far more likely that the thieves were examining the information to see what it had to offer before selling it.

Any potentially impacted members should check for notifications regarding their own data to see if their information is safe. And perhaps choose a dating site that puts more focus on security than on selecting its users.

Photo by William Christiansen