Scout - The iPhone Flirting App Under Fire

Skout is a fast-growing, free flirting app for iPhone. Recentry it has come under fire, after it was discovered that a 3rd child was raped by a man posing as a teenager in the app's separate section for 13 to 17 year olds.

The NY Times reports:

In one case, a 24-year-old man was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in Escondido, Calif. In the second, a 15-year-old girl said she had been raped by a 37-year-old man she met using Skout. In the third, a 21-year-old man in Waukesha, Wis., is facing charges that he sexually assaulted a 13-year-old boy.

It seems like this is only happening when users opt into using the GPS feature of the application, which allows them to find users nearby.

Mr. Christian Wiklund, Skout's Founder has expressed his desire to help the police with any investigations they undertake, to which we commend him. 

eHarmony Passwords Leaked [Security]

In addition to the recent leakage reported by LinkedIn, eHarmony is now reporting that passwords may have been accessed. eHarmony posted the below statement on their blog this evening:

The security of our customers' information is extremely important to us, and we do not take this situation lightly.

After investigating reports of compromised passwords, we have found that a small fraction of our user base has been affected. We are continuing to investigate but would like to provide the following actions we are taking to protect our members.

As a precaution, we have reset affected members passwords.

Those members will receive an email with instructions on how to reset their passwords.

We recommend all members to practice these robust password security tips:
• Create a strong password of at least 8 characters, composed of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers and symbols
• Create different passwords for each of the Internet sites you use
• Change your passwords every few months

Please be assured that eHarmony uses robust security measures, including password hashing and data encryption, to protect our members' personal information. We also protect our networks with state-of-the-art firewalls, load balancers, SSL and other sophisticated security approaches.

We deeply regret any inconvenience this causes any of our users.