If you thought your risqué dating app pics were safely tucked away in a password-protected vault, you might want to think again—especially if you’ve ever used niche platforms like BDSM People, Chica, Pink, Brish or Translove. Nearly 1.5 million images, many of them explicit, were left exposed online with no password protection—meaning anyone with the right link could have had a scroll.
The apps, used by roughly 800,000 to 900,000 people, were all developed by M.A.D Mobile, a company that apparently missed the memo on basic cloud security. Ethical hacker Aras Nazarovas from Cybernews discovered the exposed image stash after digging into the code behind the apps. What he found was, in his words, shocking.
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“The first app I investigated was BDSM People, and the first image in the folder was a naked man in his thirties,” he said. “As soon as I saw it I realised that this folder should not have been public.”
These weren’t just standard profile pics either. Nazarovas found private messages, moderated (removed) content, and personal photos users had likely assumed were long gone—all sitting in the open.
The security flaw was first flagged to M.A.D Mobile on 20 January. And what did they do? Absolutely nothing… until the BBC sent an email months later. Cue a sudden fix, a vague statement, and a total lack of answers about how this happened in the first place.
Image @lotteegs via IG
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“We appreciate their work and have already taken the necessary steps to address the issue,” a M.A.D Mobile spokesperson said. “An additional update for the apps will be released on the App Store in the coming days.”
But here’s the kicker: there’s no guarantee that Nazarovas was the only person who found the data. The risk isn’t just embarrassment—users in countries hostile to LGBT people could face real-world consequences if their identities were revealed. And even though names weren’t attached to the images, hackers love a challenge.
Because M.A.D Mobile dragged its feet, the Cybernews team broke the usual protocol and went public before the issue was fixed. “It’s always a difficult decision but we think the public need to know to protect themselves,” said Nazarovas.
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The whole thing echoes the infamous 2015 Ashley Madison breach—only this time, the leak wasn’t due to sophisticated hacking. It was basic negligence.
Lesson of the day? Don’t send anything you wouldn’t want floating around the internet. And maybe—just maybe—tech companies should stop treating cybersecurity like an optional extra.
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