South Korea’s data protection agency, Personal Information Protection Commission has reportedly ordered a matchmaking website to pay 1.21 billion won ($815,400) in fines over customers’ data leak.According to a report by news agency Reuters, the agency said in a statement that the matchmaking company Duo failed to implement adequate measures to safeguard their membership database. It further alleged that the firm was slow in taking action after its system was hacked last year.
Duo website hacked in 2025
Duo is one of South Korea’s best-known matchmaking services. According to the Reuters report, hackers gained unauthorised access to the company database in January last year and downloaded private personal information including their weight, blood type and whether they were previously married, of more than 420,000 current and former members.The data also included phone numbers, addresses, schools graduated from and workplaces, the report said.The data protection agency has now imposed a fine of 1.21 billion won ($815,400) fine, directing the company to take corrective action to improve how it handles personal data and to fully disclose details of the incident.The commission said that the matchmaking firm violated regulations on the collection and storage of personal data, such as citizenship ID numbers and passwords.It further stated that the company failed to meet a requirement to delete information of nearly 300,000 members gathered more than five years ago.
What Duo said
Duo said in a statement that it respected the agency’s findings and “deeply regrets that we failed to adequately protect our members’ personal data,” as quoted in the Reuters report. It further added that the breach resulted from a “hacking attack that was extremely difficult to detect or prevent.”
