Pornhub investigates hack affecting data of more than 200 million users

Data belonging to more than 200 million users of Pornhub, one of the world’s largest porn websites, has reportedly been accessed by a hacker group.

The site said, in a statement, “an unauthorised party gained unauthorised access to analytics data,” relating to some of its Premium users.

According to BleepingComputer, an independent technology news website, the data was accessed by a Western-based hacking group known as ShinyHunters.

The information is said to include viewing habits, search history and location data.

Pornhub said the incident involved data from a “third-party analytics service provider” and affected only “select” Premium users.

The Canadian-owned website said the incident “was not a breach of Pornhub Premium’s systems” and confirmed that passwords, payment details and other financial information were secure.

However, according to BleepingComputer, Pornhub had received an extortion demand from ShinyHunters in connection with the hack.

Pornhub said that since 2021, it no longer worked with Mixpanel, a company that had provided data analytics to the publisher, raising the likelihood that the data is several years old.

The company said it immediately launched an internal investigation and was engaging with relevant authorities and with Mixpanel.

“We are working diligently to determine the nature and scope of the reported incident,” the pornsite wrote.

Pornhub has more than 100 million daily visits globally, according to the company.