Ashley Madison. Anyone concerned?

[Guest *Ste***cque**]

As most people probably know, a group has hacked or leaked information on members of Ashley Madison, a website whose motto is "life is short, have an affair". Now that members email addresses and other info has been posted online, divorce lawyers are gearing up.

 

Let's deal with the "personal accountability" comments from the get go. Of course, you need to be responsible for your actions but what do you think about this groups actions? Do you support their releasing the names of people who joined that website? Do you think its wrong to essentially snitch on another's moral shortcomings?

 

Biases aside, what do the men and women on here think about releasing the names. Was it right or wrong?

[Seaniew3 340]

I believe the stealing of data and posting it publicly are both morally unjustifiable, and definitely criminal.

I also believe that the degree of immorality in the hackers' actions is much more than that of AM's members. For one thing, they can't establish that every single member is a cheater. Even in the case of cheaters, the very act of assuming the role of a judge of morality is questionable.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MightyPen 67414]

Was it right or wrong?

It was wrong, and unlawful. For that reason I would support prosecution of the hackers.

 

But it was also, always, an obvious risk for Ashley Madison's users. For anyone who has chosen to betray their partner's trust, "but I didn't think anyone would find out" isn't much of a defense for their choice once it's brought to light.

 

And yet... while I understand that "divorce!" is public society's reflexive response to infidelity, let's hope some of the couples involved here stop, think, and choose a "let's talk about why" route first.

 

I just a moment ago saw on CNN that one of the hyper-religious Duggars was on the site. Maybe it's healthy for everyone that such high-profile hypocrisy has been exposed.

 

What the leak did prompt me to think about, though, back when it first happened, was: what I would do if CERB/LYLA was similarly hacked and its participants identified? I realize that we register with only e-mail addresses here, and few of those would identify the person behind them. But my conclusion was: although I wouldn't particularly want everyone I know to see everything (sometimes quite personal) I've written here, there's nothing I'm ashamed of and I'd manage just fine.

[Dunstan Ramsay 1882]

There is a gentleman from Ottawa who is suing the parent company that owns the website because of the data breach.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/ashley-madison-data-1.3198101

 

I also hear on the radio that the website offered an additional service for anyone who decided to delete their profile. The service cost an additional $20 and it was to have any personal information related to the person's profile completely wiped from their database.

 

Well apparently this hack as shown that the service they offered didn't in fact do what it was suppose to. I would assume there might be a class action lawsuit against the company regarding the fraudulent service.

[Rubs 1373]

I don't see any possibility of it being right to release the names. its hurting the persons family more then it is the person making the choice to join such a website.

 

I'd like to know what MODs opinion is, what he has done to improve there website. and what he suggest to us on how to improve our own privacy.

 

Thanks

Rubs

[Guest *Ste***cque**]

Lesson #1 : Don't do anything online unless your prepared to have it exposed to the world. Mod is no doubt providing a secure site but even "secure" government installations can be hacked so refer to lesson #1 when online.

 

I don't know the motivation behind releasing the data, whether it's money or morals. It doesn't matter at this point. Secrets are harmful but we all have them. Judgement and threats from speaking our minds lends itself towards keeping secrets as opposed to having a real conversation on uncomfortable topics. It's always better to discuss any uncomfortable topic than to keep it in the closet, regardless of the topic. Unless you prefer secrets.

[backrubman 64800]

...I don't know the motivation behind releasing the data, whether it's money or morals...

 

That's my main problem with this disclosure. It doesn't seem to be motivated by money or morals, so I'm left to conclude it is just an act of the most obscene type of vandalism.

 

While every news outlet seems careful to point out that Ashley Madison does not send verification emails to ensure the supplied email address is valid (or owned by the person supplying it), all the credit card transactions including the date of the transaction, the persons real name, home address (or rather the billing address for the credit card), last 4 digits of the credit card number, the authorization number and the amount of each transaction is there - that can't be explained away by someone setting up a bogus account using your email address.

 

I'm also shocked by the reaction on social media, it seems everyone not affected by this has a very poor judgemental attitude (e.g. serves them right, looks good on them, etc.). Not only am I very disappointed by this, it has definitely lowered my opinion of the human race overall. These are real people and some of them will end up divorced as a result of this and some of them have children that will be forever adversely affected by their parents divorce.

 

I don't think anyone can ever come up with a valid reason why someone could be "justified" in adversely affecting the lives of so many people they don't even know. Quite simply what other people do is not our business and not for us to judge what they do. I do however find I have no problem passing judgement on the vandals behind this for the irreparable harm and damage they have done.

[conquistador 18487]

I have no problem judging people like josh duggar, you put yourself out there as one thing and then do another, it's quite laughable... And I'm sure he's not the only one. Your just setting yourself up for failure.

 

For the others, I do feel for them since this was in private and now it's out on the open and families may be hurt because of this. Hopefully they'll talk about things and see why someone needs to use the services of AM. With this repairing the marriage.

 

I was listening to chez in the evening, and one Aussie station was revealing names on the air, so one wife calls in asking if her husband was there, and yup, he was... She hung up quickly. I don't agree with this.

 

All you can do is play safe, can't be totally trust worthy of sites.

[Parker 19761]

I don't think anyone can ever come up with a valid reason why someone could be "justified" in adversely affecting the lives of so many people they don't even know. Quite simply what other people do is not our business and not for us to judge what they do. I do however find I have no problem passing judgement on the vandals behind this for the irreparable harm and damage they have done.

 

I'm no expert, but I would think whenever you have lots of saved online data, especially identity information, credit card info.. (this is wanted info by 'cyber criminals' hackers and such,) that there's a chance someone will at least try to steal it. The more of this info you have, the more someone is going to want it.

 

This is exactly why I don't keep client information, or any type of important or identifying information on my computer, phone, etc.. I have nothing to hack and nothing to lose when it stops working.

 

This isn't the first time client information has been stolen from a company.. and with the type of site it is, I was surprised it hadn't happened sooner. It's sad, but hopefully it makes people stop and think about what personal information they're sharing and what they're posting online before they do it.

[Guest]

One thing that wasn't mentioned anywhere was that this included the membership details, pics, videos, etc of people on Adult Friend Finder as well. What a bunch of jerks these hackers are.

[Phaedrus 209521]

I just a moment ago saw on CNN that one of the hyper-religious Duggars was on the site. Maybe it's healthy for everyone that such high-profile hypocrisy has been exposed.

 

In this one case, I'm fine with it. I think the Barney Frank rule has it about right.

 

Mind you, I'm sure Josh Duggar will survive this... it's pretty small beer compared to the prior revelation that he'd finger-banged his younger sisters.

 

What the leak did prompt me to think about, though, back when it first happened, was: what I would do if CERB/LYLA was similarly hacked and its participants identified? I realize that we register with only e-mail addresses here, and few of those would identify the person behind them. But my conclusion was: although I wouldn't particularly want everyone I know to see everything (sometimes quite personal) I've written here, there's nothing I'm ashamed of and I'd manage just fine.

 

Yes, absolutely. I've always worked on the basis that everything Phaedrus does online will one day fall into the hands of my worst enemy, and so while I'm happy to talk about some pretty intimate stuff I try hard not to put any information online that's personally identifying.

 

Whether I've succeeded in that is, of course, another matter entirely...

 

That's my main problem with this disclosure. It doesn't seem to be motivated by money or morals, so I'm left to conclude it is just an act of the most obscene type of vandalism.

 

The impression I've got from media reports (which may, of course, be utterly wrong) is that whoever's done this has some sort of grudge against ALM and is looking to put them out of business. Not that that's really any better.

 

The one thing that does make me think that ALM deserved it is the fact that people who had paid for "complete deletion" of their account and personal data have been screwed over. Sucks for them, of course, but the fact that ALM took money for a service they then didn't bother to provide makes me happy to see them die.

 

I was listening to chez in the evening, and one Aussie station was revealing names on the air, so one wife calls in asking if her husband was there, and yup, he was... She hung up quickly. I don't agree with this.

 

Yeah, that's just cruel... although I can't help but feel that anyone who's foolish enough to call into a show like that is, quite literally, asking for it.

 

This is exactly why I don't keep client information, or any type of important or identifying information on my computer, phone, etc.. I have nothing to hack and nothing to lose when it stops working.

 

Good for you. I wish more people followed your example.

[backrubman 64800]

The one thing that does make me think that ALM deserved it is the fact that people who had paid for "complete deletion" of their account and personal data have been screwed over. Sucks for them, of course, but the fact that ALM took money for a service they then didn't bother to provide makes me happy to see them die.

 

I agree, ALM deserves what they get, not just for taking money and then not doing anything in return for it but for outright deceit in multiple ways. One former ALM employee has come forward and admitted her job was to create fake female profiles as it has been reported that 95% of the membership were male. While I haven't bothered to do a count, I have been through the transaction data when requested to do so by panicked friends and associates and I have noticed a lot of female names on those credit card transactions so I think that 95% number may be an exaggeration, there were a lot of lonely wives using the service, a lot more than 5% of the membership from what I have seen (unless the husbands were charging it to their wife's credit card -- not likely!).

 

While ALM and by extension it's CEO Noel Biderman are evil, this isn't the way to take them down - by turning millions of people's lives upside down, especially the children of these soon to be broken families don't deserve this grief. Aside from these folks being in trouble with their spouse, a good number will also be in trouble with their employer.

 

Of my five "friends and associates" who have contacted me for help (and the only help I could give them was to let them know the full depth and breadth of the information about them that is now public), it's 100% hit rate. Much to their dismay I was able to email them a list of all their credit card transactions, the dates and the amounts and of course they already know their home address but it is there and must be accurate for the credit card transaction to be successfully processed.

 

Fortunately I won't have to have anything further to do with this now as a number of easy to use sites have now appeared to aid people who don't have the computer skills to search raw database files. I don't mean this was a fortunate development as no good will come of it, just fortunate that I don't have to have anything more to do with dealing with this mess.

 

The 3rd data dump is apparently an uncorrupt version of Noel Biderman's email (it was in the second dump that contained the source code for the web site but was unintentionally corrupted). While it is still being distributed and will take the journalists a long time to read, here is hoping that there is something in the 17.9 GBs (compressed) of email that will land him in jail.

 

I read another report that the hackers obtained full access to the servers using a VPN connection and the complex password "Pass1234", but who knows how accurate that report is.

[blondeman894 110]

hackers won't rest until they have hacked us all!

[cinelli 22184]

Anyone who keeps 17 gigs of email is nuts.

[Guest *Ste***cque**]

Apparently the hackers have been hacked, exposing some details to possibly track them down. Sounds like Karma at work. Hopefully the authorities will find out who they are and prosecute.

[roamingguy 300291]

Normally I'd post in the news section but this story seems more appropriate to place in this thread

 

'Suicides' over Ashley Madison hack

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34044506

 

RG

[Peachka 4334]

I'd be very concerned if I was one of the hackers. If they are exposed publically, they will have to worry about more than prison time. If someone is going to commit suicide over this, they may decide to kill a few hackers first.

[backrubman 64800]

'Suicides' over Ashley Madison hack

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34044506

RG

 

We knew this would happen, I think it's important to keep in mind however that if we snapshot any group of 33 million people, statistically a few of them are going to commit suicide in the next week or so (for one reason or another).

 

The relationship can only be directly drawn if someone leaves a note saying that is why they did it. Doubtless, sooner or later that will happen also.

 

I've been reading social media posts from truly desperate people that have been outed by this leak. They can't sleep, eat or talk to their spouse. These people are definitely very disturbed to have their privacy violated in this way.

 

Other details that have emerged from the leak that are interesting are covered here:

How Ashley Madison says it kept Prostitutes off the site

 

Also the $500K Bounty for Hackers is an interesting development and might even produce results and bring these criminals to justice.

[Luckyme 41401]

It seems the trouble over that website has an affect on cerb/lyla as well. The mod. has just reported that over 50 members had requested to close their cerb accounts.

 

https://www.lyla.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=219975

 

I still can't get over why some people would use their personal email addresses on sites like these. And some even used their government email addresses!! What were they thinking??

[SassiesWorld 12587]

 

I still can't get over why some people would use their personal email addresses on sites like these. And some even used their government email addresses!! What were they thinking??

 

 

 

 

 

having a dummy email account for this and sites you know you will get spam from is a smart way to go :) imo

[backrubman 64800]

It seems the trouble over that website has an affect on cerb/lyla as well. The mod. has just reported that over 50 members had requested to close their cerb accounts.

 

https://www.lyla.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=219975

 

I still can't get over why some people would use their personal email addresses on sites like these. And some even used their government email addresses!! What were they thinking??

 

So they were a dummies and used an identifiable account for cerb/lyla, perhaps even their employer provided email account, lots of people on Ashley Madison did so they are not alone in being temporarily dumb.

 

Instead of closing your account, just set up a disposable one that can't be linked to you and then change your email address in your profile. If the contents of this site have already been hacked and are out in the wild already, closing your account isn't going to help you. If it gets hacked in the future they will just get the disposable address. If they are worried about some "history" of the previous email address being kept around, well, it's already being kept around so closing the account isn't likely to be of much help.

 

Probably a good idea to take a look though all those PMs that just tend to build up in your inbox and make sure there is nothing identifiable in there also.

[Loki318 1631]

Some one Needs to Hack the hackers, publicly ID them!

 

That would cut short a few Hacking careers; I'm Sure

 

 

Sorry if this opinion ha been posted before I didnt read all of the thread in detail

[backrubman 64800]

Some one Needs to Hack the hackers, publicly ID them!

 

Don't worry, there is a $500,000 reward being offered. Some one, somewhere knows who they are (hackers always brag of their success) and that reward is going to be pretty tempting, I remain hopeful it will produce results soon and they will be behind bars shortly, the act of turning them in and collecting the reward is probably already in progress; likely the delay is the informant trying to figure out how to do it, collect the reward and still remain anonymous.

 

Unfortunately there is no undoing the damage they have done to so many people's lives, in particular I am most concerned with the children of divorced parents and given the conversations I had with a few of my friends and associates who were exposed by this, I can see how this could push someone over the edge to consider suicide.

 

I can't judge anyone that has been exposed by this; I can only make the observation that this world of professional companionship is still very poorly understood by so many that have never been able to explore it but it is also very preferable to a real romantic relationship with all the hassles and the drama that comes with it. When my wife first suggested I "get a girlfriend" I did eventually do that for a while but then I realized that I was in real danger of actually hurting someone (as I love my disabled wife and would never want to leave her) so I found a better way and ended up here.

[MightyPen 67414]

Unfortunately there is no undoing the damage they have done to so many people's lives, in particular I am most concerned with the children of divorced parents and given the conversations I had with a few of my friends and associates who were exposed by this, I can see how this could push someone over the edge to consider suicide.

Sure, but those consequences aren't the hacker's fault. They're the cheater's fault. I understand that the hacker pulled the trigger; but it's the cheaters themselves that kept loading that gun up with ammunition.

 

If being caught meant the destruction of their marriages, their careers, and/or their children's wellbeing... then Ashley Madison's clients bear the responsibility for putting those things on the line in the first place. Your list of terrible outcomes is as much an indictment of the clients' foolish choice to gamble with their own lives/marriages/children, as it is a condemnation of the hacker.

[Guest *Ste***cque**]

Glad I'm not married to MightyPen. No sympathy there. :)

 

As for the users of that site, I also can feel sympathy for them and their families. They were wrong but people make mistakes in relationships. No one is perfect... at least I'm pretty sure no one is.

 

Still, it would be useful to take some time to reflect on your relationship and what might be missing and discuss it with each other. If she finds out about your joining though and confronts you, don't lie. Admit it and take your punishment, but I wouldn't let her walk over you. Face it like a man and she may still respect you and want to work it out. Make excuses, get defensive, blame her and you make it worse. Try "I did it. I'm sorry. When you're done yelling let's talk about it". It's better than "if you had sex with me more often I wouldn't need to look elsewhere!". Trust me.

 

For those who are worried about getting caught, it can't be pleasant but you can get through this. Hopefully, in a few weeks this will fade away and we'll have moved on to other issues. We have the attention span of gnats, thankfully sometimes.