“I only have 50 users. surely that’s not interesting for hackers?”
We hear this a lot. And it’s wrong. Those 50 accounts are valuable. not to you, but to someone else. On the dark web, an email address combined with a password is worth €1 to €5 per record. Not because your app is interesting. But because most people use the same password everywhere.
Your data breach becomes your users’ problem. Their email gets taken over. Their bank account gets targeted. And they remember exactly which app it started with.
What attackers look for. and how easy it is
Attackers don’t search for specific apps. They automatically scan for known weak spots. And AI-built apps almost all have the same ones:
- An unprotected database. By default, anyone who knows where your database lives can request all data. Not just their own. every user’s data.
- Secret keys that are visible. AI tools often place your app’s “passwords” visibly in the code. Someone who knows where to look finds them within 30 seconds.
- No limit on login attempts. An attacker can try thousands of passwords per minute. Without a limit, it’s only a matter of time.
Your responsibility
Under GDPR, you as a business owner are personally liable for data breaches. Fines can reach up to 4% of your revenue. But the real loss is trust. Users who discover their data has been leaked don’t come back. They tell others. And in the age of social media, that spreads fast.
Nadia built a booking platform for yoga classes in Lovable. 200 active users, growing through Instagram. Everything seemed fine. until someone in a Facebook group posted that their email address “had been leaked somewhere.”
It turned out: the database was completely open. There was no security determining who could see which data. A script kiddie had downloaded all 200 profiles with a single simple request: names, email addresses, phone numbers, payment history.
Nadia had to: report to the Data Protection Authority, individually notify all 200 users, and publicly apologize on Instagram. Three months of trust built on Instagram. gone in one day.
The irony: the fix would have taken four business days and less than €1,000. The reputational damage was incalculable.