The hack was reportedly carried out by a western-based group called ShinyHunters, according to the website BleepingComputer, which first reported the incident. The site reported that the data included premium members’ email addresses, search and viewing activity and location. The data consists of 201m records related to premium members.

The website added that the Canadian-owned Pornhub had received an extortion demand from ShinyHunters about the hack. The Reuters news agency on Wednesday also claimed to have spoken to a ShinyHunters member in an online chat who was demanding a payment in bitcoin to prevent the publication of data and delete it.

Pornhub said in a statement on its website that premium users had been affected by an attack on Mixpanel, a company that had provided data analytics to the publisher. Pornhub said a “select” number of users had been affected and that it had stopped working with Mixpanel in 2021, indicating the data is not recent.