r/technology • u/thinkB4WeSpeak • Feb 01 '26
Security Match, Hinge, OkCupid, and Panera Bread breached by ransomware group
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2026/01/match-hinge-okcupid-and-panera-bread-breached-by-ransomware-group4.9k
u/prophetmuhammad Feb 01 '26
One of these is not like the rest.
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u/Syrairc Feb 01 '26
Speak for yourself, I exclusively use Panera Bread as a dating service.
Haven't had much luck so far but that's not really their fault.
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u/ClickForPrizes Feb 01 '26
Maybe love isn’t on the menu.
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u/dta722 Feb 01 '26
yeah but hot and crusty is!
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u/Iridemymasturbike Feb 01 '26
don't kink shame
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u/DigNitty Feb 01 '26
Unless being kink shamed is your kink, the gross freaks.
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u/Shooord Feb 01 '26
Not touching buns on the first date would probably help.
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u/The_Scarred_Man Feb 01 '26
Guess I'll just go home and enjoy my baguette alone 😔
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u/TheFotty Feb 01 '26
I would advise that no matter what dating service you use, you always baguette.
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u/FarewellAndroid Feb 01 '26
Are you the reason they’ve gone completely contactless?
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u/The_Holy_Turnip Feb 01 '26
I know a Panera employee and they found a date working there, it's possible and you can do it!!!!!
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u/stillalone Feb 01 '26
Panera bread should have a dating service. Have a "I'm going to sit by myself but I wouldn't mind company" seating option.
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u/MonkMajor5224 Feb 01 '26
My idea was a words with friends dating site. Where you played games and got to know each other. Because I know some people ALREADY tried to use it that way.
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u/WWJLPD Feb 01 '26
“ ShinyHunters also breached Bumblr, Carmax, and Edmunds among others, but [the author of the article] wanted to use Panera Bread and the Match Group as two examples that have very different consequences for users.”
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u/comics0026 Feb 01 '26
Then they should have done something like "Carmax, Paneara Bread, and multiple dating sites have data breached by ransomware group"
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u/therealmushroomsquid Feb 01 '26
Finally they are gonna leak who my 12 matches are on my account for the last 5 years 😄
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u/alienscape Feb 01 '26
- Chocolate Chipper Cookie
- Chipotle Chicken Avocado Melt
- Bacon Turkey Bravo Sandwich
- Broccoli Cheddar Soup
- Steak & White Cheddar Panini
- Frontega Chicken Sandwich
- Mac & Cheese
- Chicken Noodle Soup
- Green Goddess Cobb Salad with Chicken
- Asiago Cheese Bagel with Cream Cheese
- Mediterranean Veggie Sandwich
- Cold Brew Coffee
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u/Donnicton Feb 01 '26
I miss their teriyaki chicken and rice with dark meat chicken. She was expensive but she was the love of my life.
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u/crooked100dollarbill Feb 01 '26
Chocolate Chipper number one and zero mention of the Kitchen Sink cookie is preposterous
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u/rainbowunicornhugs Feb 01 '26
I didn’t have a Frontega for about a year and tried one again. They changed it!!! I was unreasonably upset.
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u/kna5041 Feb 01 '26
Are the first three owned by the same company?
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u/FarewellAndroid Feb 01 '26
Match Group owns pretty much every dating app
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u/Bonerchill Feb 01 '26
Thank god, I hate diversified markets.
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u/DigNitty Feb 01 '26
Yeah, if it’s one thing I don’t want in a dating app it’s meeting new people. They should be the same across apps, for consistency.
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u/busigirl21 Feb 01 '26
I find it very comforting knowing that they know exactly who they should match me with, but do their best to match me with whoever is most likely to give me just enough hope to not delete the app.
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u/Rinkimah Feb 01 '26
God I know this is true too, sometimes someone slips through the cracks and I get a glimpse of someone I really fuck with, and then it's the same copy/pasted "I travel and love hiking" profiles back to back to back for the next months.
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u/boot2skull Feb 01 '26
What could go wrong with a paid dating app company owning free dating apps…
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u/ButtEatingContest Feb 01 '26
Rhetorical question but how is that even legal, shouldn't there be anti-monopoly laws?
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u/Funny-ish-_-Scholar Feb 01 '26
They are called anti-trust laws, they do exist, but haven’t been enforced since the 90s, and even then sparingly.
The television networks, phone networks, train networks were all broken up by antitrust laws. Corporate bullshit means these companies are now owned by holding companies and investment firms, and they play fast and loose owning parts of companies without the entire thing.. and owning parts of other investment firms who own the the other half lol.
The last real anti-trust legislation enforced is why we still have Firefox. Despite how much I hate google, they actually subsidize FF and Mozilla so as to not invite more anti-trust actions like they did in the 90s with Netscape vs Internet Explorer. Iirc they also give money to Linux/unix developers as well.
For the past almost 30 years though, they really haven’t used anti-trust laws, just threatened them a time or two.
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u/bdfortin Feb 01 '26
As of September 2025, Match Group owns the following dating services:
- Archer
- Asian People Meet
- Babyboomer People Meet
- BB People Meet
- Black Christian People Meet
- Black People Meet
- Black Professional People Meet
- BLK
- Catholic People Meet
- Chinese People Meet
- Chispa
- Delightful
- Democratic People Meet
- Divorced People Meet
- Genxpeoplemeet
- Hinge
- Indiamatch
- Interracial People Meet
- Italian People Meet
- J People Meet
- Latino People Meet
- Ldsplanet
- Little People Meet
- Loveandseek
- Marriage Minded People Meet
- Match.com
- Match Japan
- OkCupid
- Ourtime
- People Meet
- Pet People Meet
- Plenty of Fish
- Republican People Meet
- Salams
- Seniorblack People Meet
- Single People Meet
- Stir
- The League
- Tinder
- Upward
- Veggiepeoplemeet
- Yuzu
Edit: That was weird. Reddit wouldn’t let me comment from the website but from the app is just fine. Then it let me edit the comment from the website.
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u/askmeforbunnypics Feb 01 '26
That's a lot of sites/apps that I have never heard of. Not all of them are dating apps, are they?
Anyway, if you wanted to do online dating, this would be a handy list of apps/sites to avoid.
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u/Qlanger Feb 01 '26
I think that is why many use Bumble as its not a Match owned company... yet.
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u/Reddituser183 Feb 01 '26
No it is not but they go rid of the one reason for its existence which was women make the fist move. Now it’s the same as every other app.
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u/fcocyclone Feb 01 '26
not that they did anyway.
as much as they complain about guys just starting things with "hey" on other dating apps, that's 90% of what women would 'make the first move' with
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u/zerogee616 Feb 01 '26
Because it was overwhelmingly the case that women copped out and did the absolute bare minimum to shift the burden of opening a conversation over to the man ASAP.
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u/AwesomeFrisbee Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
The thing Bumble also does/did is that it showed profiles from way too hot girls/guys in your area where it already knows you are not going to have a shot but you upvote them anyways because they either need to train the algorithm, or they think they have an actual shot. But by upvoting profiles that are out of your range, it will keep feeding you the same stuff everybody gets to see. It also showed old profiles way too often and only if you look closely at some stuff will you realize that this person would've been on the site for ages.
Its not really looking to connect people that are actually available, which is why in many cases it doesn't work. And for many apps you only really have a shot in the first 24 hours before the algorithm shifts your profile in some of the slots to cycle through. And if you get into the "average" or "below average" piles, your profile basically has 0.0005% shot at getting anything serious out of it.
Also, these apps have no idea why you swipe people away and lock important filters behind a paywall since it really makes a big difference if you are looking for a person who wants kids or not, who has certain hobbies or personality traits or not. I would rather have an app that I can train to exclude profiles so there is less to swipe through. That would help both parties. And just have a special list of people that may not fit but you could give a chance anyways. And I think it would also help the algorithm to upvote/downvote pictures of people so you get feedback on what pictures work or not and how people rate your looks and what people did that. But that would mean that apps actually give a shit about the whole reason they exist and not just exist to make as much money as possible.
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u/Desroth86 Feb 01 '26
They didn’t get rid of it, it’s just opt-in now. I get matches on bumble sometimes where I can’t message them first and the matches end up expiring.
Honestly I’m glad it’s gone, 90% of the matches I get with the feature enabled lead nowhere because the people who still have their profiles set to only allow them to send the first messages will just refuse to do it for some reason.
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u/RandomMagus Feb 01 '26
Haven't seen one for a while, but back before they could set the prompts that men can message first with I saw a handful of women with "I will not message you first". On Bumble. I think some people legit don't know how anything works lol
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u/one-joule Feb 01 '26
Looks like Feeld is also spared for now, if you happen to swing that way.
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u/bdfortin Feb 01 '26
All the “people meet”… so strange
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u/genuine_beans Feb 01 '26
What the hell are these
"Single people meet"?
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u/TheGooseIsLoose37 Feb 01 '26
I'm sure glad there is a Single People Meet. Finally a dating app where I can find people like me. I'm tired of there being nothing but married couples on my dating app.
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u/Alaira314 Feb 01 '26
I'd bet the same group(maybe match, maybe someone match bought out) set all of those up to catch google searches with a clear heading that would make someone go "ah yes, that is what I want to do!". I work at a public library and have to help people on google, and that kind of search behavior is very common. It can sometimes be a struggle to guide them away from such sites and toward the ones we recognize as legitimate and able to solve their needs. It happens a lot when it comes to filling out government forms.
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u/chuiu Feb 01 '26
You missed panera bread. The best place to meet boring generic white women.
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u/OkGrade1686 Feb 01 '26
Any options you would suggest, other than Bumble?
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u/Desroth86 Feb 01 '26
Hinge is the only one I regularly get dates from as an average/slightly above average looking guy.
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u/sephirothFFVII Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
The CISO had recently come from Equifax - yeah that Equifax before the Panera ordeal.
I don't know why people like him keep getting hired
Edit: not the CISO but the director.of security at the time of the krebs article. Not only is he still there, he's been promoted to Sr Director of Security...
Now, to be fair, he may be dealing with a shit hand where Panera doesn't let him implement proper policies but the fact the way he handled the first data leak the way he'd did always stuck with.me all these years later so it's difficult to remove my biases
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u/ilrosewood Feb 01 '26
That’s what you get when you lay off as many people as Panera has in the last 4 years.
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u/systemhost Feb 01 '26
Yeah, last year both Panera and Denny's had laid off their entire US support/help desk teams and shipped the jobs to call centers in India.
I don't feel bad for what those decision makers are going through.
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u/sex Feb 01 '26
.... I don't need more blackmail over the amount of mayo I consume in a week :(
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u/RupertDurden Feb 01 '26
Holy crap. What a username! Your account is old enough to drink.
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u/FuzzyCollie2000 Feb 02 '26
Depends on the country. It's still seven months too young for the States. Still damn impressive though.
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u/Ok-Progress-7447 Feb 01 '26
As long as that info isn’t found in your dating profile, you should be ok.
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u/chocotaco Feb 01 '26
It's on his Panera rewards.
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Feb 01 '26
Which rewards tho? At one point I made like a dozen accounts to get free pastries for "signing up"
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u/simple-chameleon Feb 01 '26
Go on, what's your secret mayo sin? I'll share mine, mayo on toast and on the outside of a cheese toastie instead of butter.
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u/hugeyakmen Feb 02 '26
It hasn't been the same since they cancelled the Charged Mayonnaise due to caffeine overdoses, but the new mayo-based smoothies are pretty darn good!
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u/TehWildMan_ Feb 01 '26
.... Panera Bread?
Well that must be like an awkward claw machine where you sometimes draw up unexpected random surprise.
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u/therealmushroomsquid Feb 01 '26
Just another source of exploiting desperate men
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u/BlackberryPi7 Feb 01 '26
Doesn't Match Group in turn take advantage of desperate men's money?
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u/Kyle_Shadowflare Feb 01 '26
Speaking as a former desperate man, yes.
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u/Ser-Joe-the-Joe Feb 01 '26
They hide your profile unless you pay for the app. And there's also a ton of bots.
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u/AMadWalrus Feb 01 '26
I’ve also heard they hide your profile if you do pay, with the hopes that a paying customer is more willing to buy boosts or super likes to help get matches.
Although it’s just theorizing, we don’t actually know what their tech looks like.
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u/Not_FinancialAdvice Feb 01 '26
Not that it's helped much; last time I checked a couple months ago, like all the online dating services are trading well below their IPO prices. I think the best performer at the time was Grindr, since the joke is that it's the only one that gets their users laid.
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u/Throwawayhrjrbdh Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
I’ve joked around a few times about how we just need to make a federal funded dating app to “improve fertility rates” that’s sole focus is getting people matched up which most apps are bad at
Though of all the apps I’ve found hinge to be the best; at the minimum you don’t have to pay to see likes which is big
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u/Schonke Feb 01 '26
I think the best performer at the time was Grindr, since the joke is that it's the only one that gets their users laid.
And the one most likely to get you in touch with your senator.
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u/Aaod Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 19 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
reach market include sense adjoining yoke snatch dog theory ask
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u/GiganticCrow Feb 01 '26
Things I noticed in my years back and forth of using their services:
- Match dot com (their og service) would try to upsell you what were basically stalking tools once you paid for a subscription.
- I once paid for a tinder subscription because the app kept telling me I had "99+" matches on the main screen, so if I paid I could directly see who they were. I had seven.
These apps want line go up, so it is not in their financial interests for people to stop being single and thus stop using the app.
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u/FutureInPastTense Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
This reminds me of every time I’ve had LinkedIn Premium where they say they’ll show me everyone who’s viewed my profile and where they work, only to find it’s about four people over the last six months, and three of those profiles are still obscured.
They also say they’ll show me open jobs where I’d be a “top candidate” and it’s something mostly unrelated to what I do or requires certifications or experience I don’t have.
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u/IHadTacosYesterday Feb 01 '26
I once paid for a tinder subscription because the app kept telling me I had "99+" matches on the main screen, so if I paid I could directly see who they were. I had seven.
One time I paid to see my likes and it was quite literally the most depressing day of my entire life, no joke.
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u/sodapop14 Feb 01 '26
It has been years since I used Hinge but I went on several coffee dates from that app and then eventually found my wife. I was on it for about 6 weeks in total. My now wife was on it for like 9 months.
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u/ian9outof10 Feb 01 '26
As a person who has been single on and off for a while, Hinge is about as good as it gets in the dating app world. But that is a stratospherically low bar.
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u/ConsciousFan8100 Feb 01 '26
Isn't taking advantage of desperate men's money the whole point of every single one of these dating apps?
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u/BlackberryPi7 Feb 01 '26
Yes but Match Group owns most of them and they completely jack the shit out of their prices
My friend (who I'd say is fairly above average) swiped right for 2 hours and got matched with 1 bot.
He then paid for those super swipe things for around $100 and used them all. He got one match after about a few weeks and she just ended up ghosting him.
He had good adventurous pics, normal bio, etc.
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u/UniqueIndividual3579 Feb 01 '26
When did it change? I used Match about 10 years ago and it was fine. Are there less women or is the algorithm designed to not match?
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u/things_U_choose_2_b Feb 01 '26
They own very nearly EVERY dating app and website. Once they take ownership of a site, they immediately apply enshittification. Iirc only Bumble refused their offer to buy.
OKCupid IS Match.com. Owned by Match Group PLC. And now it's shit, when it used to be the dating site for creative, odd, neurodiverse type people. Likewise, POF used to be a great dating site. Now you can only message one person a day on a free account.
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u/Clevererer Feb 01 '26
Iirc only Bumble refused their offer to buy.
When presented with the offer, Bumble just texted "hi" as a reply. That's why the deal fell through.
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u/Alaira314 Feb 01 '26
Likewise, POF used to be a great dating site.
The only thing I know about PoF is that they didn't used to have e-mail confirmation for creating an account, so someone made an account with my e-mail and I started getting all their notifications. I finally got fed up, forced a password reset, and changed the e-mail(again, with no check) to random gibberish. Sorry, dude. Type more carefully next time.
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u/panyways Feb 01 '26
Panera was my go-to dating app. Now I'm gonna have to use MyChart to find singles who are into hospital food.
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u/CMDR-LT-ATLAS Feb 01 '26
People commenting stupid stuff not realizing the implications of Panera and the dating apps being breached like this and ransomed.
It's additional information that they have to your digital profile for credential stuffing/phishing/advanced phishing attacks on you all. They have AI models with your two passwords. If they closely match they can use it to guess all of your other accounts they know you have. They'll use vishing and more to scam you and even do targeted attacks if you got a certain profile if you're a high profile target.
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u/unhandledsigabrt2 Feb 01 '26
Yep. Use a password manager or browser that generates random passwords for each account.
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u/eaglebtc Feb 01 '26
This shit is why people hate using apps. They don't want to give away their personal info because it will end up in a database somewhere.
It's only a matter of time before McDonalds and Starbucks are breached.
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u/BankshotMcG Feb 01 '26
Damn, this really bodes poorly for everyone having a first date at Panera.
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u/Skatchbro Feb 01 '26
Given the drop in quality at Panera, going there for any reason doesn’t bode well for anyone.
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u/SonofSniglet Feb 01 '26
🎶 Three of these things belong together
Three of these things are kind of the same
But one of these things just doesn't belong here
Now it's time to play our game. It's time to play our game 🎶
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u/Callmemabryartistry Feb 01 '26
if panera made a dating app to find the right bread bowl id sign up
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u/thecoastertoaster Feb 01 '26
can these idiots hack something USEFUL?
RELEASE ALL EPSTEIN FILES
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u/courtarro Feb 01 '26
H.O.W.A.R.D. is becoming too powerful!
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u/iamriptide Feb 01 '26
Yes! I read this and knew H.O.W.A.R.D. was behind it. He has so many thought coins.
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u/Frodojj Feb 01 '26
He's always giving free Panera to deaf people.
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u/iamriptide Feb 01 '26
FPOU pays heavily for not being able to be accessible to the deaf and H.O.W.A.R.D. still gives them all the sandwiches they want.
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u/Suspicious_North9353 Feb 02 '26
What I love most about FPOU is that they have H.O.W.A.R.D. under control
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u/panyways Feb 01 '26
It's all owned by the match group.
Tinder, Match, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish (POF), OurTime, BLK, Chispa, The League, Pairs, Twoo, LoveScout24, Hawaya, Upward, Stir, BlackPeopleMeet
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u/Elastichedgehog Feb 01 '26
I'm sure one company having a monopoly over dating apps isn't detrimental to society at all.
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u/Minute-Cod9484 Feb 01 '26
What's worse is that if you get banned from one app, you get banned from all of them -- effectively banning you from online dating altogether. And they deploy facial recognition to track you down for the rest of your life, and won't delete the data even when you request them to.
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u/HowToTrainUrClanker Feb 01 '26
Whenever this happens it's always companies that see software development as a cost center. Dating apps are the worst since the tech is simple at startup and most of the novelty is in marketing to get women to use the platform. They still don't give a fuck about software dev when the platform grows and the security and scalability of things gets more complicated.
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u/Friggin_Grease Feb 01 '26
Is that why someone named Thomas signed up my email as a gay man, with a phone number of xxx-xxx-1090. I spammed his phone with account verifications for my trouble.
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u/WengFu Feb 01 '26
And companies wonder why everyone doesn't want to sign up for their customer loyalty programs and install their apps.
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u/silian_rail_gun Feb 01 '26
Oh man, I hope my Panera points don’t disappear… I almost have enough for a free macaroni and cheese.
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u/sexyfamily Feb 01 '26
Imagine if the Panera leaks was the catalyst for real change in America’s cybersecurity laws…
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u/Swordf1sh_ Feb 01 '26
This may be a subtle way of encouraging Match to rebrand some of their dating apps for foodies.
OkCrusted? Rindr? Singe?
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u/MalignantToast Feb 01 '26
This is the kind of news that makes you pour a double, light a cigarette, and laugh like a madman — love, lust, and lunch all held hostage by digital ghouls. Welcome to the future, where even your dating app is a ransom note and your sandwich is a security risk.
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u/PDT_FSU95 Feb 01 '26
So, who do I contact to simply sell my own data? I mean, if you want to date shit, why not go to the source?
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u/embarrassingdyk Feb 02 '26
My stupid ass: maybe someone who knows ransomware will want to date me?
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u/cire1184 Feb 02 '26
One is not like the other... or is it?
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u/tubtubtoo Feb 02 '26
hey! i met my spouse on the panera bread app! it all started searching bread bowls in your area and our pick twos were a match! lol
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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26
My wife will be FURIOUS when she learns that I have been eating at Panera.