People Are Actually Using a Joke Dating Site That Matches People Based on Their Passwords

Finding love has never been easier—at least if you judge by the sheer number of dating apps available on the internet today. But it’s just as hard as it’s always been to find your real soulmate, someone who really understands your quirks (and may even share them), someone who shares your passions, and your password.

Wait, what?

Despite weekly data breaches, humans still suck at picking decent passwords. Enter Words of Heart, a dating site that will match you with other people who also use “123456” or “password” as their password (please stop using those passwords!). Jokes aside, the site actually does work, and matches you with people who have entered the same password as you on the site.

The site got its 15 minutes of fame on infosec Twitter last week, when hackers and security researchers collectively scratched their heads wondering if this was real, and mocked it just in case it was.

The website works exactly as advertised. With the help of Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler, I tested it myself.

Jason tested it even further by entering “password” as his password and saw dozens of matches, meaning that people are actually using the website—or at least testing it out.

Krzysztof Zając, the creator of the site, told Motherboard that the site is not a serious endeavor, but noted that it does in fact work.

“I came up with this idea as a joke and decided it would be funny to implement it,” he told me in an email.

After getting some attention on Twitter, Zając added a disclaimer on the site:

That’s good advice. If you want to fuck around with the site, almost all the usual password advice applies: choose a password that you don’t currently use anywhere else, and that is unique. But in this case, don’t make it too unique or you’ll be out of luck, and out of love.

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