{"id":651127,"date":"2026-06-03T17:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=651127"},"modified":"2026-06-03T17:15:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T15:15:14","slug":"one-of-south-africas-largest-dating-websites-denies-being-hacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/651127-one-of-south-africas-largest-dating-websites-denies-being-hacked.html","title":{"rendered":"One of South Africa’s largest dating websites denies being hacked"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The operator of DatingBuzz, one of South Africa’s oldest and most popular online dating sites, denied claims on a popular hacking forum that it had been breached and that its customer records had been put up for sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Threat actors recently posted on a deep web hacker forum that they had obtained over 670,000 records containing the private data of DatingBuzz.co.za users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It provides a detailed look at the organisation’s operations, including contacts, partner preferences, and user communication settings,” the actor said in the post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The data is fresh and organised across 3 main sections, useful for research, analysis, or understanding the structure of South Africa’s relevant sector.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poster set the price of the data at R19,479, claiming that it included email addresses, full names, account passwords, and user chats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launched in 2002, DatingBuzz dominated South Africa’s early online dating landscape, with over 140,000 local users by 2005, mostly aged 24 to 29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the site’s popularity was supplanted by app-based giants like Tinder, the company still claimed the title of the largest and is among the first search results on Google.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duncan Forrest, founder and CTO for DatingLab, a UK-based software company that operates DatingBuzz’s platform, told MyBroadband that they had experienced no breaches in recent months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’re not aware of any breaches, and no one has contacted us directly to try to ransom our data or sell it back to us,” said Forrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forrest explained that there were field names mentioned in the data which they did not use, and which included data points the company did not have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“For example, none of our sites accepts profile videos, so none of our databases contains anything related to them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Potential for AI-generated “leaks”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The Wanderers Club, Johannesburg.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The threat actor’s post contained links to alleged dataset samples; however, none of these links worked at the time of publication, so the samples could not be verified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forrest said that, on closer inspection of the post, he was “inclined to write this off as another fake post” because there was no verifiable data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband has observed a new trend following claimed data breaches, with companies in South Africa rubbishing them as containing fake data samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, we reported that the iconic Johannesburg sports club, The Wanderers Club, as well as telecommunications giant Telkom, denied claims of breaches<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 27 May, a poster on the same hacker forum claimed to be selling private data belonging to Wanderers and Telkom customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The companies later told MyBroadband that they did not experience any system breaches and that the data in the samples was not legitimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The sample data and file names do not align with the data structures, records, categories, or systems held or managed for The Wanderers Club,” said Frank Auger, club general manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Telkom provided similar feedback, saying there was no evidence that its systems had been compromised or that customer data had been accessed or sold online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While a different poster created the DatingBuzz advertisement, the formatting of the posts is similar, which may indicate AI-generated content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ian van Rensburg, security engineering head for Africa at cybersecurity firm Check Point Software, said that hackers were now relying significantly more on AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They use AI software to create deepfakes and highly sophisticated phishing campaigns to trick victims into revealing private information or paying money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“AI can write phishing emails, create false websites, and so forth because AI is so good at mimicking that it implements the correct website look, the logos, the feel,” said Van Rensburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Posters on these forums could be generating fake data from South African companies using AI to sell it to other hackers who frequent the same forums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alleged hacker who claimed to have Wanderers and Telkom data made hundreds of posts in a short time, containing names from companies around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The large number of posts increased the likelihood that the fake data would succeed in luring in sales, all of which contained arbitrary pricing for datasets, all hosted on the same platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Similarities between fake breaches on South African companies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Most recent post from threat actor claiming to possess data from DatingBuzz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
May post from threat actor claiming to have data from Telkom customers. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DatingBuzz, one of South Africa’s oldest and most popular online dating sites, denied claims posted on a hacking forum that it was breached and data from thousands of users leaked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":651143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[103768,105641,105642,105640,105645,30960,105646,105607,1565,109,105563],"class_list":["post-651127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-breach-forums","tag-dating-sites","tag-dating-websites","tag-datingbuzz","tag-datinglab","tag-deep-web","tag-duncan-forrest","tag-frank-auger","tag-hacker","tag-telkom","tag-wanderers-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651127"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651503,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651127\/revisions\/651503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}