Profiles linked to councillors found on white supremacist dating site

A Conservative councillor has been suspended from the party after appearing on a leaked user list of a white supremacist dating site.

- Xavier Greenwood

The site was seemingly shut down live on stage at a security conference last month by Martha Root, a German hacker. Before erasing the site, Root had taken advantage of security weaknesses to download a database of the site's users and last week published a sample of the data. About 450 of the 8,000 profiles shared online said they were from the UK.

People found by The Observer in the database include an ex-member of the British National Party, activists with the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative, and a man who ran for political office for Britain First.

Also listed is Lillith Osborn, a former teacher and Conservative councillor in Glastonbury, Somerset. When she joined the site in 2020, before she was elected, she described her political orientation as "pro-white" and said she was seeking a partner interested in "indigenous European spirituality".

Osborn told The Observer she discovered WhiteDate while researching modern paganism and went on it "once or twice". She said she has mixed-race children and only described herself as pro-white in order to be trusted on the site.