Hackers Expose User Data from a Dating Site

Hackers have made the user information of the site "Ashley Madison" publicly available. Ashley Madison is a dating site for married individuals (or those in committed relationships) that was founded in Canada in 2001. The site has a famous slogan that says, "Life is short, have an affair." In 2015, the site had 124 million monthly visitors, ranking it 18th among dating sites. The hackers first announced in July that they had accessed user information (names, addresses, credit card numbers, emails, phone numbers, sexual fantasies, and other personal information) and stated that if the site continued its operations, they would disclose this information in August... Now they have kept their promise. The hacking team (calling themselves the Impact Team) has released a file (approximately ten gigabytes) containing information from 37 million users of the site, claiming that Ashley Madison contains thousands of fake female user IDs. Furthermore, they noted that "your husband may have registered on this site but never met anyone. He just tried. Although it may not make a difference." The file containing the information is available for download via BitTorrent, and experts say that removing this information from the internet is very difficult, if not impossible. A site called AshleyMadisonleaked.com has also made this information available to the public with the option to search for names and other details. The traffic to this site has been so high that access has become very difficult since Wednesday morning. This file also includes information from users of the site Establishedmen.com, which is a site for women to find wealthy men. Both Ashley Madison and Established Men are operated by the Canadian company Avid Life Media. The fear of being exposed to one's spouse is just one of the fears of users of this site. Their credit card information (along with names, addresses, and email addresses) is now available to everyone. According to Mikko Hypponen, an information security expert, users of this site are victims of a crime (the hacking of the site). They may have only signed up for the site and never used it, but now they are seen as "traitors." Although traffic to Ashley Madison dropped by half after the news leak in July, it seems they have nearly returned to their original numbers, with about two million daily visitors. However, their credibility regarding the security of user information has been completely destroyed.