Viral anti-masturbation app exposed sensitive user data

A viral app to help men stop masturbating exposed thousands of users' data, 404 Media reports.

The app, Quittr, claims to be the "#1 Porn Addiction App to Quit Porn Forever" on its website. It apparently blocks porn websites on one's device, as well as tracks one's "abstinence" from porn. Quittr also has community features like groups, a "panic button" for "emergency nofap help" and even an AI therapist. ("Nofap" began as a Reddit community to stop masturbating, and experts warn against using AI for therapy.)

"Porn addiction," like "sex addiction," isn't recognized by the DSM-5, which classifies mental disorders. While porn-viewing can be compulsive, like other behaviors, research suggests that perceived porn addiction predicted distress over actual porn use itself. Yet, the idea of "porn addiction" persists in the U.S., which lacks comprehensive sex education requirements in many states; only 37 percent of states require sex education to be medically accurate, according to Boston University.

"Porn addiction," like "sex addiction," isn't recognized by the DSM-5, which classifies mental disorders.

Meanwhile, for years, the "nofap" community on Reddit and elsewhere has purported the benefits of not ejaculating, from physical to mental boons, but there is limited research on the veracity of this.

In this environment, Quittr has thrived, with a 4.7 out of 5 rating based on around 29,000 ratings on Apple App Store, and a 4.8 out of 5 rating based on 8,400 ratings on Google Play. Its founders, Alex Slater and Connor McLaren, recently told New York Magazine that the app has been downloaded 1.5 million times and brings in $500,000 per month. (It costs users $30 per year.)

Now, 404 Media reports that Quittr leaked data about hundreds of thousands of users' masturbation habits as well as lied about its security issues.

A researcher told 404 Media that they scanned apps for a misconfiguration in apps that use the development platform Google Firebase, as that same issue was seen in the Tea app. The researcher found that Quittr had the same problem and contacted the founders about the issue, and while they said it would be fixed in an hour, it wasn't fixed for months.

Apparently, the researcher could access data for more than 600,000 users on Quittr, including 100,000 who identified as minors.

When 404 Media's Emanuel Maiberg called them, they denied there was an issue. But the misconfiguration has since been fixed, according to the report.