HappyHotel, popular search engine for love hotels in Japan discloses data breach

HappyHotel, a Japanese search engine used to find and book rooms in “love hotels,” announced to have suffered a security breach in December.

HappyHotel is a popular Japanese search engine for “love hotels,” it is used by married couples and unfaithful spouses, it allows users to book rooms in love hotels in Japan.

Almex, the company that operates HappyHotel, published a data breach notice on the website.

“Apology and announcement regarding the possibility of leaking personal information due to unauthorized access to the “Happy Hotel” service operated by our company” reads the notice.

According to Almex, the incident was discovered on December 22 when the company discovered unauthorized access to its service.

User data compromised in the data breach includes names, email addresses, usernames, passwords, birth dates, gender information, phone numbers, home addresses, and payment card details.

In response to the incident, the company launched an investigation and suspended its service, it also suggested users change the passwords.

In cases like this, users are exposed to the risk of blackmail, crooks could threaten them of revealing data of their escapades.

Almex also suspended Loveinn Japan, another love hotel search engine it operates but did not reveal the reason.

In 2015, the popular online cheating site Ashley Madison was hacked, and a big amount of data was stolen by hackers who posted part of this information online as proof of the attack.

The hackers claimed to have completely compromised the Ashley Madison company accessing users’ data, including financial records, and other personal information.

The hack had a terrible impact on its users, some of which committed suicides.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – HappyHotel, hacking)