Staff Reporter

Pornhub has recently been hit by a massive data breach after a hacking group reportedly stole the records of more than 200 million users.

The hackers, identified as the group ShinyHunters, claim to have seized a 94GB database containing sensitive user information and are currently demanding a Bitcoin ransom to prevent the data from being leaked online.

The breach primarily targets Pornhub Premium accounts. While the company stated that passwords and credit card numbers were not compromised, the stolen files contain deeply personal activity logs, including email addresses and account usernames.

Stolen data also includes location data and timestamps of user activity.The theft appears linked to a security incident at Mixpanel, a data analytics firm that Pornhub used until 2021.

Because the data originates from a third-party partner rather than Pornhub’s internal servers, much of the information reflects user activity from several years ago.

However, the exposure of email addresses linked to adult content remains a high risk for phishing and extortion attempts.

Experts recommend that any user who has held a Pornhub account in the last five years to change their email password if it is shared with their adult platform accounts,enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) on all personal accounts and ignore extortion emails.