Brands
McDonald’s warns its customers that ‘Big Mac’ is one of the worst passwords
NETHERLANDS: Forget fries with that. Your password could be just as easy to steal. On Change Your Password Day (February 1), McDonald’s Netherlands pulled no punches, revealing that ‘bigmac’ has appeared in 110,922 data breaches.
The fast-food chain leaned on “Have I Been Pwned” data to highlight a worrying habit. Consumers pick predictably weak passwords. It is not just pets, birthdays, or “123456.” Fans of familiar brands and favourite menu items are making hackers’ lives far too easy. ‘Frenchfries’ pops up 34,407 times, ‘happymeal’ 17,269 times, and ‘mcnuggets’ 2,219 times, with countless variations adding numbers or symbols.
Cybersecurity experts have long warned against lazy passwords. Yet the pattern persists, exposing the yawning gap between knowing better and actually doing better online. By turning its own brand ubiquity into a teaching moment, McDonald’s shows that cultural icons can succeed where generic campaigns fail.
The message is simple. If your password tastes like a menu, it is time to change it. Pick something unique, complex, and utterly un-McDonald’s. Hackers will not be laughing or ordering this time.
Brands
UK’s OnlyFans seeks US investor at $3bn valuation after owner’s death
The adult video platform is seeking stability after the death of its billionaire owner
LONDON: OnlyFans is looking for a new partner. The London-based adult video platform is in advanced talks to sell a minority stake of less than 20 per cent to Architect Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm, in a deal that would value the business at more than $3bn (£2.2bn).
The move is driven by an urgent need for stability. Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-American billionaire who owned OnlyFans, died of cancer last month at the age of 43, leaving the future of one of Britain’s most profitable privately held businesses suddenly uncertain.
The choice of Architect Capital is not arbitrary. The firm has deep expertise in financial services, which aligns neatly with OnlyFans’ ambitions to offer banking products to its creators, many of whom have long struggled to access basic financial services because of the nature of their work.
The numbers behind OnlyFans are, by any measure, staggering. The platform posted revenues of $1.4bn in the year to 30th November 2024, with a pre-tax profit of $684m, up four per cent on the prior year. Payments to creators totalled $7.2bn over the same period, a rise of nearly ten per cent. Radvinsky personally collected $701m in dividends from the business in 2024 alone, on top of more than $1bn in such payments he had already received. The platform, run through its parent company Felix International, hosts 4.6m creator accounts, with performers keeping 80 per cent of subscription proceeds and the platform pocketing the remaining 20 per cent. It has 377m fan accounts in total.
The current minority stake talks represent a notable scaling back of ambitions. In January, OnlyFans was reported to be in discussions with Architect about selling a majority stake of 60 per cent. Before that, the company had explored a sale to a consortium led by Forest Road Company, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. Neither deal materialised.
OnlyFans has built an enormously lucrative business on content that mainstream finance has long refused to touch. Now, with its owner gone and a $3bn valuation on the table, it is looking for the kind of respectable institutional backing that might finally persuade the banks to take its calls.
