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Anyone notice that the media is eating this up? But let me tell you the media also lent its support to this website. I was watching CNBC a few years ago and the

Anyone notice that the media is eating this up? But let me tell you the media also lent its support to this website. I was watching CNBC a few years ago and they had the CEO of Ashley Madison on and had a great time talking about their "brilliant business model", and how great the site was. No one seemed morally repulsed then. Well I was curious just from a business perspective (and curious how many people would actually go for it). Turns out you could not even peek at the site without giving them your email address. So I did, thinking little of it, and discovered to my surprise that is all it took to create an account. After being thoroughly unimpressed (honestly I don't even recall the site it was so lack luster) I went to delete my account only to discover they wanted $80 to do so. Well, I discovered their brilliant business model. Far more disgusting than any individual that wound up in this data dump are the heads of this business. How have we come to accept this kind of immoral behavior on the large scale, while blanket condemning all the individuals who fell prey to their game?

nsajko 11y ago
Was that even legal?
- pluma 11y ago
  Not in the EU.
burnburnburn 11y ago
The immoral business behavior seems to be the hackers' motivation, based on what they've written. They sought out to destroy the business. I'm guessing they'll succeed in that.
- bradleyankrom 11y ago
  I know the sample Troy showed may not be representative of the whole, but I think there are a lot of users, outside of tech, that aren't aware of the breach. There is a comment somewhere -- maybe it's from the article, I can't remember -- expressing surprise that the AM home page doesn't acknowledge the breach at all. I would imagine that they are still receiving signups from folks who aren't following this story.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    You'd think they'd at least change the "Over 39,470,000 anonymous members!" bit. If nothing else, to avoid being sued for false/deceptive advertising.
  - lemevi 11y ago
    Those Ashley Madison users that aren't aware of the breach, or with families that are not aware are still possibly going to be targets of people will use the data to blackmail them. That is there may be a large number of AM users who will be made aware of it one way or another. If there is enough personally identifiable information in the dumps, strangers on the internet are going to use it as their personal piggy bank and send mass emails out to threaten whomever they find with black mail. They'll say "Send me $1,000 or I'll tell your spouse" and they'll keep doing it. Apparently home address and phone numbers are in the dumps for some members.
  - hyperpape 11y ago
    They are still receiving signups: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/634828309386371073 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/63482830938637107...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - bradleyankrom 11y ago
      "Internet dating consultancy" what a world
    - Avenger42 11y ago
      Mike Masnick of Techdirt also got signed up post-breach: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150820/16523632021/day-someone-signed-me-up-ashley-madison-account-that-day-would-be-yesterday.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150820/16523632021/day-s...
- powertower 11y ago
  If I recall correctly, the hackers wrote that they where morally outraged that AM was charging the users a deletion fee, and not deleting their data. Except by releasing the users data, it clearly shows their motivation is more against the users, then any shady business practices.
  - stcredzero 11y ago
    No reason why they can't be against both groups, and are just killing two birds with one stone.
inversionOf 11y ago
No one seemed morally repulsed then. The single and only reason Ashley Madison got media attention -- and they got plenty (morning radio in the Southern Ontario space just loved bringing them up) is that it was salacious: The whole premise of a site to arrange affairs is just very "click baity", and it's sure to draw attention. Ashley Madison played those cards brilliantly, turning their entrant in a hyper competitive dating site market into a newsworthy, edgy find an affair site. But that same gambit also means that if you fail, many want to see you fail big, exactly the same motivations drawing media. There is no hypocrisy or dual standards here. Site is newsworthy for its market, and it's newsworthy for success, and even more for failures.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Dealing with media is like dealing with demons - they'll give you great fame and riches beyond belief, but once you're known to them, they'll happily throw you under the bus to further their own interests. Media outlets are not your friends, they don't care about you at all. They have their own agendas.
sp332 11y ago
And the media right now seems to be focused on the contents of the dump instead of the hackers who dumped it, or the ethics of dumping it, or the trouble of AM having all this data in the first place let alone unsecured.
- smtddr 11y ago
  The scandals this data leakage reveal are way too tantalizing for anyone to care how it all happened to begin with. Most of the twitter posts have applied their morals/ethics/whatever, replaced the word "hackers" with "karma" and are happy this happened.
smtddr 11y ago
>>I went to delete my account only to discover they wanted $80 to do so. Well, I discovered their brilliant business model. Hmm, so... did you pay? And if you did, have you verified your data is _not_ in the torrent dumps? It's been said that AM wasn't deleting as promised, even after paying, and that's a key part of a pending class-action-lawsuit.
- akshatpradhan 11y ago
  For me, its really the company Ashley Madison that's the most horrible out of all of this. Relationships are definitely high risk because they can seriously damage personal reputation. To have a company simply not do their due diligence in providing reasonable protection is beyond incompetence and negligence. Its gross that they didn't even honor peoples' request to have their profiles deleted. Hackers are gonna hack. Cheaters are gonna cheat. Haters are gonna hate. But damn Ashley Madison, in such a high risk game, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
gnufied 11y ago
To be completely fair, internet industry as a whole is hell bent on keeping users in, rather than letting them delete their accounts. The other day, I was trying to delete my Steam account and I couldn't find a way to do that and Valve happens to be one of the most respectable company on earth. I don't know what will change attitude of our industry. I guess lot of us are still stuck with mindset of real-world brick/mortor shops - if you don't want do anything with Shop X just don't go there! Sadly this does not really work for loads of internet services. Perhaps we need a legislation like Right to Forget (I am not endorsing EU law fwiw).
- SXX 11y ago
  Let's say fair you shouldn't expect to have account removal on Steam because it's would be abused as hell: family conflicts, script kiddies, "friends" "jokes", etc.
  - akshatpradhan 11y ago
    We shouldn't expect the ability for Steam to honor a request to remove our accounts because that ability could be abused by family conflicts, friends and jokes?
    - SXX 11y ago
      Yes because it's nearly impossible to check if it's actually you request removal and not somebody else. Otherwise Steam would have to keep your account data on servers anyway so there is no point in removal procedure. Considering Steam don't ask about any of your personal information (and you can pay using PayPal or even "offline" wallet codes) I would suspect that such feature will be used more for harm than good.
      - gnufied 11y ago
        Wait, why do we need special requests for Steam account removal? I would login and delete my account (and as a result immediately logged out I suppose). Steam uses two factor authentication for login and unless someone has got hold of your Steam password and email password, you should be safe.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>How have we come to accept this kind of immoral behavior on the large scale Cheating is legal and doesn't affect me a customer. Its crazy that an entrepreneur forum is obsessed with exposing these men and women. Not too long ago, my dad's generation were saying "A company run by a gay? I'd never do business with such a morally bankrupt pervert!" Meanwhile, my own bosses have said things like, "Hire someone who smokes pot? Well, we don't hire immoral criminals here! Now piss in this cup." Now here we are, again. Maybe we should just stop moving the goalposts and understand that what people do privately is their own fucking business. I don't care how many affairs you've had. I just care about the value proposition. I hate how cheating makes everyone a moralist and a biblethumper, when they otherwise have secular liberal values. I hate this entitlement and culture of shame it brings out in people who should know better.
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  As a successful polyamorous person, I find the whole thing kind of amusing.
- iso8859-1 11y ago
  > Cheating is legal No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery#United_States
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    From the article: " In the United States, laws vary from state to state. Up until the mid 20th century most US states (especially Southern and Northeastern states) had laws against fornication, adultery or cohabitation. These laws have gradually been abolished or struck down by courts as unconstitutional.[138][139][140]" If the law making it illegal is unconstitutional, it's legal.
    - iso8859-1 11y ago
      Did you see the bit about Michigan? Here is the current law: http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?mcl-777-16a http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?mcl-777-16a
3pt14159 11y ago
You need to be far more paranoid. When Ashley Madison's parent company tried to hire me I obviously said "no", but I also became curious about their site from a different perspective (I wanted to check out their technology). But I created a one time use email address to check it out.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Sometimes, I even use nonce email addresses with non-vice-based businesses. For anything potentially embarrassing or blackmailable, I believe I would have to create an entirely separate and strictly segregated identity for each one, even just for "evaluation". Practically everyone has had a data breach by now. It's well past time to start acquiring data-protection habits to practice before going out on the Internet.
  - 3pt14159 11y ago
    I'm going to tell my kids I'm logging everything they do on the internet. I'm also not going to let them get a credit card. If they find a way of buying a VPN with Bitcoins then I'll figure that they are old enough to suffer the ramifications of not being paranoid.
  - kolinko 11y ago
    that's what mailinator.com is :)
  - kzhahou 11y ago
    Indeed. Only a matter of time before reddit and hackernews get dumped. That's be fun (esp. reddit)
jahnu 11y ago
There are now two suspected suicides due to this. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34044506 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34044506 Terribly sad and deeply disturbing. Imagine what will happen the first time a government's database of all the sites we are visiting is leaked.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Note that a location tracking database would probably give you enough information to determine who's actively cheating. All the big 3 (Microsoft, Google, Apple) plus the cell phone companies have this data.
EyeballKid 11y ago
That kind of site appears to be soooo easy to get media coverage for. I wrote a blog post a couple of years back covering a similar UK-based site and how good they were at getting stories planted in the papers. Those free-loving libertines at the Daily Mail especially seem to lap it up :-) http://unsourced.org/blog/illicit-sex-and-free-advertising.html http://unsourced.org/blog/illicit-sex-and-free-advertising.h...

nsajko 11y ago

Was that even legal?

pluma 11y ago
Not in the EU.

burnburnburn 11y ago

The immoral business behavior seems to be the hackers' motivation, based on what they've written. They sought out to destroy the business. I'm guessing they'll succeed in that.

bradleyankrom 11y ago
I know the sample Troy showed may not be representative of the whole, but I think there are a lot of users, outside of tech, that aren't aware of the breach. There is a comment somewhere -- maybe it's from the article, I can't remember -- expressing surprise that the AM home page doesn't acknowledge the breach at all. I would imagine that they are still receiving signups from folks who aren't following this story.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  You'd think they'd at least change the "Over 39,470,000 anonymous members!" bit. If nothing else, to avoid being sued for false/deceptive advertising.
- lemevi 11y ago
  Those Ashley Madison users that aren't aware of the breach, or with families that are not aware are still possibly going to be targets of people will use the data to blackmail them. That is there may be a large number of AM users who will be made aware of it one way or another. If there is enough personally identifiable information in the dumps, strangers on the internet are going to use it as their personal piggy bank and send mass emails out to threaten whomever they find with black mail. They'll say "Send me $1,000 or I'll tell your spouse" and they'll keep doing it. Apparently home address and phone numbers are in the dumps for some members.
- hyperpape 11y ago
  They are still receiving signups: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/634828309386371073 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/63482830938637107...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - bradleyankrom 11y ago
    "Internet dating consultancy" what a world
  - Avenger42 11y ago
    Mike Masnick of Techdirt also got signed up post-breach: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150820/16523632021/day-someone-signed-me-up-ashley-madison-account-that-day-would-be-yesterday.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150820/16523632021/day-s...
powertower 11y ago
If I recall correctly, the hackers wrote that they where morally outraged that AM was charging the users a deletion fee, and not deleting their data. Except by releasing the users data, it clearly shows their motivation is more against the users, then any shady business practices.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  No reason why they can't be against both groups, and are just killing two birds with one stone.

inversionOf 11y ago

No one seemed morally repulsed then. The single and only reason Ashley Madison got media attention -- and they got plenty (morning radio in the Southern Ontario space just loved bringing them up) is that it was salacious: The whole premise of a site to arrange affairs is just very "click baity", and it's sure to draw attention. Ashley Madison played those cards brilliantly, turning their entrant in a hyper competitive dating site market into a newsworthy, edgy find an affair site. But that same gambit also means that if you fail, many want to see you fail big, exactly the same motivations drawing media. There is no hypocrisy or dual standards here. Site is newsworthy for its market, and it's newsworthy for success, and even more for failures.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Dealing with media is like dealing with demons - they'll give you great fame and riches beyond belief, but once you're known to them, they'll happily throw you under the bus to further their own interests. Media outlets are not your friends, they don't care about you at all. They have their own agendas.

sp332 11y ago

And the media right now seems to be focused on the contents of the dump instead of the hackers who dumped it, or the ethics of dumping it, or the trouble of AM having all this data in the first place let alone unsecured.

smtddr 11y ago
The scandals this data leakage reveal are way too tantalizing for anyone to care how it all happened to begin with. Most of the twitter posts have applied their morals/ethics/whatever, replaced the word "hackers" with "karma" and are happy this happened.

smtddr 11y ago

>>I went to delete my account only to discover they wanted $80 to do so. Well, I discovered their brilliant business model. Hmm, so... did you pay? And if you did, have you verified your data is _not_ in the torrent dumps? It's been said that AM wasn't deleting as promised, even after paying, and that's a key part of a pending class-action-lawsuit.

akshatpradhan 11y ago
For me, its really the company Ashley Madison that's the most horrible out of all of this. Relationships are definitely high risk because they can seriously damage personal reputation. To have a company simply not do their due diligence in providing reasonable protection is beyond incompetence and negligence. Its gross that they didn't even honor peoples' request to have their profiles deleted. Hackers are gonna hack. Cheaters are gonna cheat. Haters are gonna hate. But damn Ashley Madison, in such a high risk game, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

gnufied 11y ago

To be completely fair, internet industry as a whole is hell bent on keeping users in, rather than letting them delete their accounts. The other day, I was trying to delete my Steam account and I couldn't find a way to do that and Valve happens to be one of the most respectable company on earth. I don't know what will change attitude of our industry. I guess lot of us are still stuck with mindset of real-world brick/mortor shops - if you don't want do anything with Shop X just don't go there! Sadly this does not really work for loads of internet services. Perhaps we need a legislation like Right to Forget (I am not endorsing EU law fwiw).

SXX 11y ago
Let's say fair you shouldn't expect to have account removal on Steam because it's would be abused as hell: family conflicts, script kiddies, "friends" "jokes", etc.
- akshatpradhan 11y ago
  We shouldn't expect the ability for Steam to honor a request to remove our accounts because that ability could be abused by family conflicts, friends and jokes?
  - SXX 11y ago
    Yes because it's nearly impossible to check if it's actually you request removal and not somebody else. Otherwise Steam would have to keep your account data on servers anyway so there is no point in removal procedure. Considering Steam don't ask about any of your personal information (and you can pay using PayPal or even "offline" wallet codes) I would suspect that such feature will be used more for harm than good.
    - gnufied 11y ago
      Wait, why do we need special requests for Steam account removal? I would login and delete my account (and as a result immediately logged out I suppose). Steam uses two factor authentication for login and unless someone has got hold of your Steam password and email password, you should be safe.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

>How have we come to accept this kind of immoral behavior on the large scale Cheating is legal and doesn't affect me a customer. Its crazy that an entrepreneur forum is obsessed with exposing these men and women. Not too long ago, my dad's generation were saying "A company run by a gay? I'd never do business with such a morally bankrupt pervert!" Meanwhile, my own bosses have said things like, "Hire someone who smokes pot? Well, we don't hire immoral criminals here! Now piss in this cup." Now here we are, again. Maybe we should just stop moving the goalposts and understand that what people do privately is their own fucking business. I don't care how many affairs you've had. I just care about the value proposition. I hate how cheating makes everyone a moralist and a biblethumper, when they otherwise have secular liberal values. I hate this entitlement and culture of shame it brings out in people who should know better.

LesZedCB 11y ago
As a successful polyamorous person, I find the whole thing kind of amusing.
iso8859-1 11y ago
> Cheating is legal No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery#United_States
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  From the article: " In the United States, laws vary from state to state. Up until the mid 20th century most US states (especially Southern and Northeastern states) had laws against fornication, adultery or cohabitation. These laws have gradually been abolished or struck down by courts as unconstitutional.[138][139][140]" If the law making it illegal is unconstitutional, it's legal.
  - iso8859-1 11y ago
    Did you see the bit about Michigan? Here is the current law: http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?mcl-777-16a http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?mcl-777-16a

3pt14159 11y ago

You need to be far more paranoid. When Ashley Madison's parent company tried to hire me I obviously said "no", but I also became curious about their site from a different perspective (I wanted to check out their technology). But I created a one time use email address to check it out.

logfromblammo 11y ago
Sometimes, I even use nonce email addresses with non-vice-based businesses. For anything potentially embarrassing or blackmailable, I believe I would have to create an entirely separate and strictly segregated identity for each one, even just for "evaluation". Practically everyone has had a data breach by now. It's well past time to start acquiring data-protection habits to practice before going out on the Internet.
- 3pt14159 11y ago
  I'm going to tell my kids I'm logging everything they do on the internet. I'm also not going to let them get a credit card. If they find a way of buying a VPN with Bitcoins then I'll figure that they are old enough to suffer the ramifications of not being paranoid.
- kolinko 11y ago
  that's what mailinator.com is :)
- kzhahou 11y ago
  Indeed. Only a matter of time before reddit and hackernews get dumped. That's be fun (esp. reddit)

jahnu 11y ago

There are now two suspected suicides due to this. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34044506 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34044506 Terribly sad and deeply disturbing. Imagine what will happen the first time a government's database of all the sites we are visiting is leaked.

pjc50 11y ago
Note that a location tracking database would probably give you enough information to determine who's actively cheating. All the big 3 (Microsoft, Google, Apple) plus the cell phone companies have this data.

EyeballKid 11y ago

That kind of site appears to be soooo easy to get media coverage for. I wrote a blog post a couple of years back covering a similar UK-based site and how good they were at getting stories planted in the papers. Those free-loving libertines at the Daily Mail especially seem to lap it up :-) http://unsourced.org/blog/illicit-sex-and-free-advertising.html http://unsourced.org/blog/illicit-sex-and-free-advertising.h...