Ashley Madison, which describes itself as “the most famous name in infidelity”, was targeted by Impact Team in July. It is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities. And just like with any ordinary data breach, they would have to prove they were harmed in some way in order to collect damages.
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Severe blow For Avid Life Media, questions remained about whether more data will be released and how its business can go on while the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Canadian police investigate what the company believes was an inside job.
Michelle Thomson, who represents the Edinburgh West constituency, said she has never had any contact with the site.
Last month the hackers had demanded that ALM take down Ashley Madison and its companion site Established Men, which promises to connect handsome young women with rich sugar daddies “to fulfil their lifestyle needs”, or else it would publish users’ personal information. “Have an affair”. Avid Life released a statement calling the hackers criminals.
Vernick noted that the hackers posted the information on the “dark web”, a corner of the Internet that’s tough for most average Web surfers to reach.
But he stressed that an email address on the dating database is not proof the person associated with it ever registered with or visited the site, because Ashley Madison did not use an email verification system to check users are linked to that address. The information that was posted included customer names and credit card numbers, Thorsheim said.
A year ago Ashley Madison South Africa revealed that it had 205 000 local members.
Not surprisingly, Avid Life Media published a statement late Tuesday in response to the exposure of the personal information of millions of clients.
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Ashley Madison’s slogan is ‘Life is short. Potential embarrassment probably isn’t enough to justify that, and such a request would likely draw strong opposition from defense lawyers, he says. “We’re getting a lot of phone calls”. He wouldn’t speculate on how the courts might rule.
