Their press release, in its entirety:
TORONTO, June 18, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — CasualX, a leading hookup app clarified false statements in a recent report by vpnMentor’s research team. According to the report, CasualX is one of the affected apps in a data breach incident discovered by security researchers on May 24.
The research was led by Noam Rotem and Ran Locar at vpnMentor, and they reported an unprotected Amazon Web Services ‘buckets’ with over 20 million files linked to 100,000s users from a number of niche dating and hook up apps. The apps were built for people with alternative lifestyles and particular tastes, such as ‘Cougars,’ queer dating, fetishes, and group sex. Based on the research, they claimed that these apps share a common developer.
“Once we learned of this, our team took quick steps to determine the facticity of the reported problem. After thorough investigation, we want to make an official announcement based on our findings,” said Jeffrey Cheung, co-founder of CasualX.
Clarifications from CasualX team quoted as follows:
#1, As of now, we have encountered no data breach in any form. All data have been kept safe with us.
#2, We do not use AWS to store our users’ data. All data of CasualX users are stored on a SoftLayer account. SoftLayer is a product of IBM.
VpnMentor’s statement:
“Based on our research, the apps share a common developer. As a result, user media from each app had been stored on a single Amazon Web Services (AWS) account.”
#3, We have no relationship with other apps mentioned by vpnMentor. We do not share the common developer with other affected apps.
VpnMentor’s statement:
“Based on our research, it appears the apps share a common developer, for the following reasons:
Gaydaddybear.com is hosted on the same AWS account as Ghuntapp.com
Similar branding, web design, logos across multiple app websites
Some of the apps list “Cheng Du New Tech Zone” as a developer on Google app store
“
#4, We do not store voice messages or any other form of audio files. In fact, we haven’t applied the audio function to the app.
VpnMentor’s statement:
“The files were incredibly sensitive, uploaded from user accounts, and exposing details of user profiles and private conversations happening on the apps.
These included media files, such as:
Images and photos
Voice messages and audio recordings
“We appreciate the efforts made by vpnMentor team, but CasualX shouldn’t have been included in this list. We have already sent an email to them to ask about what went wrong” said Jeffrey Cheung, “We are dedicated to providing a secure channel to all the users, and that’s what we have been doing all these years. We don’t want any user on CasualX to get confused by this data breach drama.”