Donald Daters, A Dating App for Donald Trump Supporters, Leaked Its Private User Info On Launch Day
The new dating app Donald Daters, launched exclusively for singles looking to bond over their mutual support of the 45th president, leaked its users’ private data on its launch day, according to Tech Crunch.
The app was founded by Emily Moreno, a former campaign aide for Sen. Marco Rubio, who told Fox News that she decided to launch the app due to apparent liberal backlash on traditional dating apps like Tinder.
“For many young Trump supporters, liberal intolerance has made meeting and dating nearly impossible. Support for the president has become a dealbreaker instead of an icebreaker. That’s why we created a new platform for Trump supporters to meet people without being afraid of talking politics,” said Moreno, CEO of Donald Daters, in a statement.
She stated that the app is an “American-based singles community connecting lovers, friends, and Trump supporters alike.”
Moreno might be onto something with her app idea since politics in this country are as divided and contentious as they’ve ever been.
According to a 2016 survey from Tinder and reported by Huffington Post, up to 71 percent of people swiping considered major political differences to be a huge dealbreaker.
Moreno’s message obviously got people on board, since the app had nearly 1,600 users and counting the day it launched.
Unfortunately, those 1,600 users’ data was far from secure, according to French security researcher Elliot Alderson.
Alderson revealed to Tech Crunch that information like users’ names, profile pictures, what type of phone they downloaded the app onto. and their private messages were all able to be downloaded from the user database.
I made a small proof of concept to show how the database of the Donald Daters app is vulnerable. With this POC I can:
– see all private messages
– see all user info
– delete what I want: a message, an user, the all database, … pic.twitter.com/7doErhzYdY— Baptiste Robert (@fs0c131y) October 15, 2018
Moreno tweeted about the security issues on Tuesday, releasing a statement about the incident on Twitter.
“We have taken swift and decisive action to remedy the mistake and make all possible efforts to prevent this from happening again,” she said. “Out of an abundance of caution, we have temporarily suspended the chat service on the app while we implement new security protocols. We are also taking immediate steps to engage a leading, independent cybersecurity firm to pressure test the system to ensure it is secure against other vulnerabilities.”
DonaldDaters yesterday was alerted to the fact that our third-party chat feature did not have proper security configuration, potentially allowing malicious actors to pose as users and engage other users through the chat feature. Full statement here: https://t.co/sL09e8S0ul
— DonaldDaters (@DonaldDaters) October 16, 2018
While the company has acted on the security issue and is working to clean it up, users can’t be happy about this type of breach, especially considering it charges users $30 a month.
On top of the security issues, Motherboard feels the overall site is shoddy, finding misspelled words throughout the app and incorrect gender matches in incorrect cities.
Hopefully, Donald Daters can resolve its technical problems and come out on the other end better, unlike a different dating app dedicated to Trump supporters called Trump Dating.
The app was rocked by scandal when prominent conservative activist and face of the app Barrett Riddleberger was revealed to have filmed himself having sex with a 15-year-old girl, according to the New York Post.
