PRESS RELEASE – Building Healthy Online Communities, a consortium of HIV and STD prevention organizations, has released a report with the results of its "NiceAF" campaign's research to combat online hate speech and racism. The report contains recommendations for apps and sites to take, based on input from ~5.5K users. BHOC worked with Adam4Adam, Daddyhunt, dudesnude, Grindr, GROWLr, Jack'd, Manhunt, SCRUFF, and POZ Personals to recruit its users to share their ideas. BHOC asked users to suggest and then rate a number of steps that apps should take to reduce discrimination and hate speech. The full report is available at NiceAF.org.
Category: Jack’d
Manhunt Hacked, Thousands of Accounts Stolen
TECH CRUNCH – Apr 15 – Manhunt, a gay dating app that claims to have 6M male members, has confirmed it was hit by a data breach in February after a hacker gained access to the company's accounts database. The hacker downloaded the usernames, email addresses and passwords for a subset of our users. Manhunt was launched in 2001 by Online-Buddies, which also offered gay dating app Jack'd before it was sold to Perry Street in 2019 for an undisclosed sum. Just months before the sale, Jack'd had a security lapse that exposed users' private photos and location data.
Queer Dating Apps Partner for NiceAF Campaign
PRESS RELEASE – June 3 – In the first ever cross-site collaboration of this kind, Building Healthy Online Communities (BHOC) and dating apps for gay and bisexual men (Adam4Adam, Daddyhunt, Grindr, POZ Personals, SCRUFF and Jack'd) have teamed up to make their online communities kinder for everyone with the NiceAF.org campaign. The team behind NiceAF.org has compiled a number of videos featuring men telling stories of how they keep the online experience NiceAF. Starting June 3rd, the collaborating apps will invite their users to vote for the video that does the best job of embodying NiceAF's mission of promoting nicer, kinder interactions between users.
Sexual Health Programs Are Using Gay Dating Apps to Get Users Tested for HIV
by Arno Pedram
See full article at NBC News
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Dating News Update – Bumble, Badoo, Jack’d and Tinder
OPW – July 16 – Ten years ago I tried an experiment doing video news updates from locations like Prague and Venice. They were a lot of work, and and way too long really. I think 2-3 minutes is about all the time you have, so here’s a new experiment. Two Minute Tuesday News Updates. Please let me know your thoughts.
Scruff Acquires Jack’d for an Undisclosed Sum
SYS-CON – July 10 – Perry Street Software, a New York-based gay mobile software developer and the parent company of Scruff, has acquired gay dating app Jack'd. Jack'd will continue to operate as a stand-alone app. Since its launch in 2010, Jack'd has grown to ~5M members worldwide. Perry Street will invest significant resources to upgrade the technology and reliability of the Jack'd app. In the coming months, Jack'd members can expect to see the removal of all programmatic advertising, enhanced controls over privacy and security, and new features such as improved messaging, redesigned Match, richer search, and the ability to include video as part of member private albums or in chat.
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Owner of Gay Dating App Jack’d to Pay Out for Leaving Nudes and Private Photos Exposed
GIZMODO – June 29 – Jack'd parent company, Online Buddies, did not properly secure photos uploaded using Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (S3), leaving the images and other data vulnerable. New York Attorney General Letitia James said that the company knew of the issue and "didn't do anything about it for a full year." Jack'd is used by ~6M men worldwide. Investigators estimated that of the app's ~7K active New York users on Jack'd between Feb 2018 and Feb 2019, ~1,900 users could have uploaded nude images. Online Buddies will pay $240K to New York as part of the settlement, which also requires a significant overhaul of its security measures. "We apologize to our users for this flaw," said a spokesperson for Online Buddies. "We worked closely with, and cooperated fully with, the New York Attorney General's office in their investigation of this matter."
Gay Dating App Jack’d Is Allegedly Exposing Private Photos to the Public
THE REGISTER – Feb 5 – Gay dating app Jack'd lets gay and bi men chat each other up, exchange private and public pics, and arrange to meet. The photos, public and private, can be accessed by anyone with a web browser and who knows just where to look, though, it appears. As there is no authentication, no need to sign up to the app, and no limits in place, the entire image database can therefore be downloaded and used for a blackmail. Apparently, the developers of the app were warned of the security vulnerability three months ago, and yet no fix has been made.
by Shaun Nichols
See full article at The Register
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Study: Grindr And Jack’d Could Allow Hackers To Steal Users’ Data
GAY STAR NEWS – Feb 6 – A postgraduate student has published evidence showing gay dating apps Grindr and Jack’d have a major data flaw that could allow hackers to steal users’ personal data. Jason Chao says he can prove the apps are not encrypting data sent to third party advertisers. This allows anyone to intercept the data transfer, and steal it. ‘I am not the first one to discover Grindr and Jack’d being leaky. Researchers at a Japanese university were the first ones to point out the issue of both apps sending unencrypted data to third-party advertisers. However, they only saw evidence of device models and carrier names being susceptible to hackers. But in my study, I also found personal data is accessible too.’
by Jamie Wareham
See full article at Gay Star News
Jack’d Attacks Grindr For Racist Profiles
ADVOCATE – Oct 27 – Grindr is being accused by competitor Jack'd of doing too little to stop racism on its platform. Jack'd is pushing a new video on its social media and issued a news release calling out Grindr for including member profiles with messages like "No blacks, no Asians." Other profiles say they prefer white men. Jack'd called the problem "rampant."
by Lucas Grindley
See full article at Advocate