The MyFitnessPal Hack May Affect 150 Million People. It Could've Been Even Worse.
One of the long-held fears about our wearable data-tracking habits is that the vast collection of information would be accessed by hackers. Beginning around 2013, the quantified self movement gained momentum. With Apple Watches on our wrists and apps like RunKeeper on our phones, we're tracking what time we go to bed, what food we eat, what medicine we take, even what routes we run from our front door. Online thieves have already targeted Fitbit owners in an attempt to defraud the wearable maker, and health care companies have been the target of numerous hacks in the past few years. Now popular nutrition- and fitness-tracking app MyFitnessPal has become the latest service - and one of the first in the health-and-activity-monitoring space - to reveal its data has been accessed in a hack.