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'Suicides' over Ashley Madison hack
- MasterScrat 11y ago> two unconfirmed reports of suicides Maybe we should wait until we have some kind of confirmation before discussing this?
- sp332 11y agoBut by then the news cycle may be over! Gotta get in before the deadline.
- JohnBooty 11y agoFrom the story: Two Ashley Madison clients are reported to have taken their lives after hackers published their details according to police in Canada. While police certainly can make mistakes and even tell lies, this sounds like confirmation to me.
- MasterScrat 11y agoYes now it does, article was edited since my first comment.
- untog 11y agoI imagine it will be next to impossible to conclusively prove that AM was the reason for the suicides, so the best anyone can say is that the two events coincided.
- rawTruthHurts 11y agoI'm sure it didn't help either.
- 51Cards 11y agoIf they left notes behind, it's pretty conclusive.
- FilterSweep 11y agoIt is crystal clear that Mainstream media has been chomping at the bit to release the "fallout of the AM hacks" type story. These stories generate clicks - whether true or not.
- Albuca 11y agoThis topic is touched on in the Krebs article released today (which includes information from the Toronto PD press release), in that the Toronto PD are investigating... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10110649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10110649
- sancha_ 11y agoThat is quite some money they're offering for a hack that didn't happen. Or did they acknowledge in the meantime, I haven't really followed these news.
- softawre 11y agoThey have acknowledged.
- sandworm101 11y ago30 million people. How many suicides would be normal on a given day anyway? A few have probably dropped dead of heart attacks and strokes too.
- callesgg 11y agoYeah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...
- mikeash 11y agoThe current suicide rate in the US is about 12 per 100,000 per year, so that translates to about 10 per day among a population of 30 million. Assuming, of course, that the risk factors among that population match up with that of the entire US population, which they probably don't.
- sandworm101 11y agoThey are probably worse. AM users were predominantly male, which I believe increases the likelihood of suicide.
- mikeash 11y agoYes, the suicide rate for men in the US is over 20 per 100,000, while for women it's about 5.5.
- bkmartin 11y agoIs that due to the much higher success(?) rate among males vs females? What are the "attempts" per 100,000?
- toyg 11y agoStatistically, females are more likely to self-harm in non-lethal ways. This acts as suicide prevention, in a way, since it triggers responses from the environment and reduces the likelihood of worst outcomes. Males don't self-harm and overall don't signal their discomfort until it's too late.
- LinuxBender 11y agoI am no lawyer, however I suspect we have a few on this site. Does a suicide potentially move this from willful civil negligence into the realm of criminal negligence? Nonfeasance?
- Erik816 11y agoIf you mean would Ashley Madison be criminally negligent for allowing themselves to get hacked, the answer is pretty clearly no. There's a very high standard for criminal negligence. Your conduct has to "grossly deviate" from normal conduct, usually showing a great disregard for human life. We don't want to be locking people up for every poor business choice or bad decision.
- abluecloud 11y ago> We don't want to be locking people up for every poor business choice or bad decision. Whilst that is true, we equally don't want to be completely ruling it out. An investigation should be conducted regarding the actual attack, and perhaps their handling of the leak. Did they even notify all users?
- smt88 11y agoTheir conduct absolutely "grossly deviated" from normal conduct. They falsely advertised data deletion services, for one thing. It'd be hard to argue that it conduct that disregarded human life, though.
- comrh 11y agoEven if they aren't directly related, I hope some people will at least take pause about the spread and analysis of people's private, leaked information. Sure they're kinda scummy but it is their private lives.
- paulhauggis 11y agoPlease. Nobody cares about privacy when it comes to people they don't like. Donald Sterling is a good example of this. So is the ex-Mozilla CEO. Their lives were both destroyed...yet it's justified because what they did was morally wrong and against the narrative. Nobody even mentioned the fact that privacy was violated because the ends justified the means. Now that you might have your privacy violated, it's a topic of discussion. If you violate the trust of your partner and show up on this website, you deserve everything you get. After all the recent comments and stories here on HN, I hope this happens more often, to shit in the face of all the whiny little SF hipsters that think they are somehow morally better than the rest of society. This is actually why Trump is winning in the majority of the polls. Most people (like me) are sick of the double-speak and political correctness that is destroying the country. The truth will set you free.
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoWhile you could argue that the Mozilla controversy was about Brendan Eich's privately held beliefs, he publicly donated $1,000 to Prop 8, which was how it came to be known.
- jessaustin 11y agoIs it possible to privately donate to political causes? Should it be?
- PirateDave 11y agoYou can donate to a 501c up to I believe $5000 anonymously.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Is it possible to privately donate to political causes? Its possible to privarely donate to all kinds of organizations which amount to political causes, its not possible (legally) to do so to political campaign committees, however.
- BrendanEich 11y ago
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoThe breach was "very sophisticated", said Detective Menard from the technological crime unit of Toronto Police. Bets on whether the "sophisticated" attack turned out to be a run-of-the-mill employee phishing e-mail or a brute force attack on an unsecured server with root login?
- dmix 11y agoThe hacking part tends to be easy. Especially for soft targets like a dating site. The hard part is: - exfiltrating large amounts of data without detection - not getting caught afterwards
- sandworm101 11y ago"Very sophisticated" simply means the responding officers didn't immediately understand the attack. That isn't a very high bar imho.
- dmix 11y agoOr the officers are preparing an early excuse for not being able to apprehend the criminals later on. Which is a likely outcome considering the track record of these types of non-financially motivated attacks recently.
- andrewhillman 11y ago"Life is short, have an affair." Apparently, those affairs made life a lot shorter. The irony of a tag line.