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Zack Whittaker reports via TechCrunch: A reader contacted TechCrunch after his [OkCupid] account was hacked. The reader, who did not want to be named, said the hacker broke in and changed his password, locking him out of his account. Worse, they changed his email address on file, preventing him from resetting his password. OkCupid didn't send an email to confirm the address change -- it just blindly accepted the change. "Unfortunately, we're not able to provide any details about accounts not connected to your email address," said OkCupid's customer service in response to his complaint, which he forwarded to TechCrunch. Then, the hacker started harassing him strange text messages from his phone number that was lifted from one of his private messages. It wasn't an isolated case. We found several cases of people saying their OkCupid account had been hacked.

But several users couldn't explain how their passwords -- unique to OkCupid and not used on any other app or site -- were inexplicably obtained. "There has been no security breach at OkCupid," said Natalie Sawyer, a spokesperson for OkCupid. "All websites constantly experience account takeover attempts. There has been no increase in account takeovers on OkCupid." Even on OkCupid's own support pages, the company says that account takeovers often happen because someone has an account owner's login information. "If you use the same password on several different sites or services, then your accounts on all of them have the potential to be taken over if one site has a security breach," says the support page. In fact, when we checked, OkCupid was just one of many major dating sites -- like Match, PlentyOfFish, Zoosk, Badoo, JDate, and eHarmony -- that didn't use two-factor authentication at all.

With recent news that Facebook altered users' feeds as part of a psychology experiment, OKCupid has jumped in and noted that they too have altered their algorithms and experimented with their users (some unintentional) and "if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work." Findings include that removing pictures from profiles resulted in deeper conversations, but as soon as the pictures returned appearance took over; personality ratings are highly correlated with appearance ratings (profiles with attractive pictures and no other information still scored as having a great personality); and that suggesting a bad match is a good match causes people to converse nearly as much as ideal matches would.

Hugh Pickens writes "Social awkwardness has the most opportunity to shine in your very first message to a potential sweetheart, write Andrea Bartz and Brenna Ehrlich at CNN. Bartz and Ehrlich enumerate and humorously describe seven types of message senders: the generalizer, the autobiographer, the 'eccentric,' the creeper, the gusher, and the wordless wonder. Our favorite: the generalizer, whose typical first message may be 'hey, wuts up?' Why does no one want the generalizer? 'You're probably stupid. Or possibly illiterate,' write Bartz and Ehrilich. According to OKTrends, bad grammar and bad spelling are huge turn-offs in a first message. 'Our negative correlation list is a fool's lexicon: ur, u, wat, wont, and so on. These all make a terrible first impression. In fact, if you count hit (and we do!) the worst 6 words you can use in a first message are all stupid slang.' Other tips from OKTrends' analysis of successful keywords and phrases from over 500,000 first contacts on OKCupid: Avoid physical compliments, bring up specific interests, and if you're a guy, be self-effacing."

Here's an interesting and funny look at 526,000 OkCupid users, divided into groups by race and gender and all the the things each groups says it likes or is interested in. While it is far from being definitive, the groupings give a glimpse of what makes each culture unique. According to the results, white men like nothing better than Tom Clancy, Van Halen, and golfing.