This week the popular adultery themed website Ashley Madison got hacked setting a dangerous precedent for users around the web.
The 37 million users at clandestine dating website Ashley Madison are facing a complicated situation. A hacker group by the name of Impact Team claims to have compromised the databases of the company, and are threatening with releasing “all customer data, including profiles with fantasies” if the entire website and its sister sites do not go down.
Recollecting user data is an unavoidable practice in social networks, and even though it’s just routine most times, just so the algorithm can work its magic, in Ashley Madison’s case, it could have heavy repercussions – even though it might sound like poetic justice at first. Ashley Madison offers a service to delete all data from their database for $19 USD, and this alone nets them some $1.7 millions per year, as users come and go. Despite this, according to Impact Team, this is also a lie and all information remains on their database, albeit hidden. At the same time, they don’t show compassion for the users as they said “too bad for those men. They’re cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion“. The same text refers to Ashley Madison’s sister site Established Men as “a prostitution / human trafficking website for rich men to pay for sex” and that it would be a “a very bad day for many rich and powerful people” in the US and Canada if this information came to light.
As of now, Ashley Madison are working in countermeasures, but they said this is just “only the latest among many companies to have been attacked, despite investing in the latest privacy and security technologies“. Even then, CEO Biderman suggest this data has not come from a hack, but from an inside source from the company gone rogue. Starting today, the website claims to have deleted all related posts, and to have taken all security measures necessary to protect their userbase.
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