6 ms·

The possibilities are endless, I imagine someone will make this data easily searchable and journalists will be digging through to found anyone of notoriety that

The possibilities are endless, I imagine someone will make this data easily searchable and journalists will be digging through to found anyone of notoriety that was dumb enough to sign up with their own names and credit cards etc. This hack could create a ton of news stories, including record divorce rates. I'm curious as to how the ashley madison admins are killing these links? DMCA takedowns? What's the mechanism for this?

cft 11y ago
You can actually submit any bogus name and address when you pay with a credit card- in most cases, the payment will go through if the zip and CVV match. Most carders know this, but the honest costomers do not...
- cdcarter 11y ago
  You don't always need the CVV. A lot of processors will be fine with card number, expiry, zipcode, and the street number of your address. Sometimes I try giving wrong information to see what will happen. Usually, it works.
  - icelancer 11y ago
    Stripe makes CVV collection optional, for sure.
    - kalleboo 11y ago
      PayPal Website Payments Pro lets you opt out of address verification at least (can't remember if CVV is an option as well but I think so)
steve19 11y ago
... or worse, use somebody else's name and create a realistic profile (do these sites have profiles?) that makes it look like the person you are impersonating.
cheald 11y ago
There's another case to be considered here, too - people who have used the site, got caught/came clean, did the work to fix it and have rescued their marriages (or were doing it with the blessing of their spouse), and now are at risk for their name being published for viewing by their coworkers, neighbors, members of their church, etc as a "cheater", "adulterer", etc, even after they've ostensibly paid their moral debt. There are certainly a lot of karma coming to a lot of people who deserve it, but there's also a lot of hurt coming to people who probably don't. An unrelated thought: I can only imagine how giddy the staff over at Gawker must be right now. This is like the David Geithner story times 37 million.
- Asbostos 11y ago
  If your friends or coworkers abuse you because of their beliefs, then they are the ones causing harm, not the person who informed them. You sound like you're not giving full blame to those abusers or at least accepting that their behavior is inevitable. If you're a member of a church which abuses adulterers, and you don't think adulterers should be abused, then you're as much to blame by supporting that stance with your membership.
  - cheald 11y ago
    I am ruminating on the harm to be had here, not the moral culpability for it; it's easy to not be sympathetic here because these are by design people who occupy the moral low ground, but I can think of a few cases off the top of my head where this could cause real unwarranted harm to peoples' lives. Improperly applied, this could be as damaging as membership on the sex offenders' list for public urination. The fact that the people passing judgment are the ones imputing harm doesn't really change the fact that there are people whose lives will be damaged disproportionate to their crime, and I think that's extremely unfortunate. Edit: I can't recommend it as a literary work, but the themes and lessons of Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" are directly and immediately relevant here.
  - reitzensteinm 11y ago
    I think you're making the mistake of treating blame in this instance as though it has to add up to 100%, and blame on one party lessens it on another. If my friend's dad hates gays, I tell him his son is gay knowing it's likely to cause violence, then the father and I are both total pieces of shit. His guilt does not absolve me in the least.

cft 11y ago

You can actually submit any bogus name and address when you pay with a credit card- in most cases, the payment will go through if the zip and CVV match. Most carders know this, but the honest costomers do not...

cdcarter 11y ago
You don't always need the CVV. A lot of processors will be fine with card number, expiry, zipcode, and the street number of your address. Sometimes I try giving wrong information to see what will happen. Usually, it works.
- icelancer 11y ago
  Stripe makes CVV collection optional, for sure.
  - kalleboo 11y ago
    PayPal Website Payments Pro lets you opt out of address verification at least (can't remember if CVV is an option as well but I think so)

steve19 11y ago

... or worse, use somebody else's name and create a realistic profile (do these sites have profiles?) that makes it look like the person you are impersonating.

cheald 11y ago

There's another case to be considered here, too - people who have used the site, got caught/came clean, did the work to fix it and have rescued their marriages (or were doing it with the blessing of their spouse), and now are at risk for their name being published for viewing by their coworkers, neighbors, members of their church, etc as a "cheater", "adulterer", etc, even after they've ostensibly paid their moral debt. There are certainly a lot of karma coming to a lot of people who deserve it, but there's also a lot of hurt coming to people who probably don't. An unrelated thought: I can only imagine how giddy the staff over at Gawker must be right now. This is like the David Geithner story times 37 million.

Asbostos 11y ago
If your friends or coworkers abuse you because of their beliefs, then they are the ones causing harm, not the person who informed them. You sound like you're not giving full blame to those abusers or at least accepting that their behavior is inevitable. If you're a member of a church which abuses adulterers, and you don't think adulterers should be abused, then you're as much to blame by supporting that stance with your membership.
- cheald 11y ago
  I am ruminating on the harm to be had here, not the moral culpability for it; it's easy to not be sympathetic here because these are by design people who occupy the moral low ground, but I can think of a few cases off the top of my head where this could cause real unwarranted harm to peoples' lives. Improperly applied, this could be as damaging as membership on the sex offenders' list for public urination. The fact that the people passing judgment are the ones imputing harm doesn't really change the fact that there are people whose lives will be damaged disproportionate to their crime, and I think that's extremely unfortunate. Edit: I can't recommend it as a literary work, but the themes and lessons of Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" are directly and immediately relevant here.
- reitzensteinm 11y ago
  I think you're making the mistake of treating blame in this instance as though it has to add up to 100%, and blame on one party lessens it on another. If my friend's dad hates gays, I tell him his son is gay knowing it's likely to cause violence, then the father and I are both total pieces of shit. His guilt does not absolve me in the least.