"Your site has been hacked Brian...the impact is enormous."
At first, I didn't really understand what the supposed problem with my dating site actually meant and so decided to call my webmaster and ask him directly about it as if nothing was wrong at all. Maybe things weren't as bad as they seemed? The two of us chatted for a good 20 minutes and I began to understand what had happened. Everything began with an email from This is Money's travel editor Simon Bower:
Hey Brian, I noticed your website www.adultfriendfinder.com is up for sale so figured this must mean it has been hacked? We've been talking about writing a story on this issue but need some more information first before publishing it online. Is that ok? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!
Simon sent me a screenshot of my site being advertised as "adultfriendfinder back again" complete with my home phone number and email address on it all for sale at £2,500 ($3,500). This didn't make sense to me at first but then I soon realized that hackers had bought the domain name once belonging to my site, adultfriendfinder.com and pushed their own content onto it to attract traffic. This means they were able to take control of the entire website and use it for whatever purpose they wanted – likely a scam or some kind of criminal activity as you might expect given the name of this particular dating site well-known online as AdultFriendFinder.
Adultfriendfinder hacked: users' details sold on dark web!
I was still in shock at how badly my dating site had been compromised after calling Simon back and forth over Skype several times before we arranged for me to call him from his landline one evening. That's when things really started getting interesting during our telephone conversation. "I was just about to call you about the hack on your website Brian," Simon said proudly as we began our talk. "It's much worse than anything I could have imagined and this is something we need to take seriously because hundreds of millions of people will be affected."