Records from a 2011 data breach of the adult website Fling.com reportedly contain an email address that attorneys for Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico have confirmed belonged to him and was used by him in the past.

Fling operated as a self-described "World's Best Adult Social Network" focused on adult hookups. The site allowed users to send private messages, upload photos, view live webcams, and connect based on stated sexual interests and preferences. Accounts could be created without mandatory email verification in some cases, and the platform claimed tens of millions of members at its height.

The breach occurred in March 2011 and exposed approximately 40.8 million user accounts. Stolen data included email addresses, usernames, plaintext passwords, IP addresses, dates of birth, genders, geographic locations, phone numbers, sexual fetishes, sexual orientations, and website activity. The incident came to wider public attention years later when the data was offered for sale in 2016 on a dark web marketplace. Fling's domain registrant confirmed the sample data's legitimacy and attributed it to the 2011 breach.

Breach data publicly available since the incident shows the email associated with an account created on December 26, 2010, under the username "mohawk787." The profile listed interests such as "FETISH," "GROUPSEX," "SEXUAL RELATIONS," "ONLINE FLIRTING," and "OTHER." The email address is marked as validated in the records.

Talarico's attorneys stated in a letter to Townhall that the account was created using a hacked email address, remained active for only 54 seconds, and featured a birth date and ZIP code that do not match Talarico's. They described the account as likely created by a bot and threatened legal action against any assertion that Talarico himself created or used the Fling account, calling the report "nothing but a recycled set of defamatory allegations".

The account creation date falls shortly before Talarico began teaching sixth-grade English in San Antonio through Teach For America. An IP address linked to the Fling.com account in the breach data matches an IP used to register an account on another service tied to an email associated with Talarico's sister. Talarico's attorneys did not dispute the IP address overlap with a service linked to Talarico's sister is documented in the data but maintain it does not tie him to the account. "IP address exposed in a prior breach can easily end up in a dataset like this regardless of whether it was used to create an account," their letter said.

Regardless of the veracity of the claims, many users online are already responding. Talarico's Republican opponent in the Texas Senate race, Attorney General Ken Paxton, posted on X over the allegations, writing that "Talarico is weirder than anyone ever imagined."

Paxton's fellow Republican Bo French, running for Texas Railroad Commissioner, also made a post on the allegation.

Claims about the account's supposed creation method, automated or otherwise, remain unverified beyond the assertions of the Townhall report and attorneys' statement as of Friday evening.