By RAPHAEL SATTER, Associated Press
LONDON (AP) — Users of a chat service linked to the heavily-trafficked YouPorn website have had their personal information compromised after a third-party service provider failed to secure its data, YouPorn's owners said Wednesday.
Luxembourg-based Manwin Holding SARL said the chat site had been disabled and would remain offline until an investigation was carried out. Manwin spokeswoman Kate Miller stressed that the site was run by an outside company on separate servers and that there was no breach at YouPorn itself.
"YouPorn continues to ensure that all appropriate measures and tools are in place to maintain the security of its infrastructure, and to safeguard the privacy of its users," she said in a statement.
It remains unclear how many people were potentially affected by the breach. Thousands of leaked email address and password combinations purportedly linked to the chat service were circulating online, but their authenticity could not be confirmed by The Associated Press. At least some of the addresses appeared to be bogus or inactive.
Manwin runs some of the world's most-visited pornography websites, and its YouPorn offering is one of the 100 most-popular sites on the planet, according to Web information company Alexa.
Miller said she could not immediately say who ran the chat service, called YP Chat. The site was down Wednesday, but a cached version described it as an "affiliate partner program site licensed by YouPorn."
Earlier this month, a hacker claimed to have broken into a site associated with Manwin-owned pornography maker Brazzers and published a stash of usernames and passwords.
The company said at the time it had taken steps to notify the users involved.
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