Hackers Target Romance Seekers: 1.5 Million eHarmony Passwords Leaked!

Social networks make it easy for people from all over the world to connect, build alliances, and come together. The large user base of these networks also makes it a very attractive target for hackers and cyber criminals who have nothing better but to wreak havoc in these online communities.

First, there was the LinkedIn password debacle, where close to 6.5 million users had their passwords leaked online. Now we've got another password leak on our hands, this time from online dating site eHarmony. Not much harmony to expect at this point, as users of the site are now being advised to update their accounts and change their passwords for security purposes.

Approximately 1.5 million password hashes of eHarmony users were leaked. The site's admins have taken it upon themselves to change the passwords of affected users, who are advised to change it again as soon as possible.

Please be assured that eHarmony uses robust security measures, including password hashing and data encryption, to protect our members' personal information. We also protect our networks with state-of-the-art firewalls, load balancers, SSL and other sophisticated security approaches.

-- eHarmony's Becky Teraoka

Users are advised to change their passwords following these guidelines:

• Create a strong password of at least 8 characters, composed of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers and symbols

• Create different passwords for each of the Internet sites you use

• Change your passwords every few months

If you think that your eHarmony account has been affected, head on over to this link to see what you can do about it.