Fraudsters hacked Omiai, Japan’s biggest dating app, exposing personal data like drivers’ licenses, insurance cards and passports, Bloomberg reported on Monday (May 24).
The Omiai app, which is operated by Net Marketing Co., has more than 1.7 million members. It’s not known how many were exposed by the cyberattack. No credit card data was leaked, the company told Bloomberg, but it has not been confirmed what type of information was exposed.
The dating app has more than 6.8 million accounts and charges men ¥3,980 ($37) for a monthly membership, per Bloomberg. There is no charge for women to join.
The stolen data included customer information that was provided to the company between January 2018 and April of this year. Omiai said that a probe of its data server showed several cyberattacks last month, Japan Times reported.
The digital dating space in Japan has seen a surge in growth, more than doubling in size since 2016, Business Day reported, citing a study by a division of CyberAgent, which also has a dating app. The market is forecasted to reach ¥106 billion by 2025, a 70 percent increase from this year.
Omiai also partners with Japanese cities to host matchmaking events intended to help people forge relationships that lead to marriage and to emphasize the perks of settling down in rural areas of the country, according to Business Day.
A PYMNTS report earlier this month, done in collaboration with NuData, showed that the pandemic-fueled reliance on eCommerce has made people more aware than ever of data security and privacy. Some 65 percent of people surveyed said they wouldn’t return to a merchant’s site if there was a cyberattack.
The FBI 2020 Crime Report by the Internet Crime Complaint Center and the Recovery Asset Team indicated that the cybercrime ecosystem has shifted. Complaints soared 69 percent compared to 2019, with losses topping $4.1 billion. There was also pandemic-specific fraud relating to unemployment, business loans and disaster recovery loans.
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