In the last month, a team of hackers, known as The Impact Team, completed a major data breach which leaked information from millions of users from Ashley Madison, an app designed for people seeking extra marital affairs.
Let’s break this down. An app made for cheaters who are married lost approximately 32 million people’s names, addresses, physical descriptions, detailed sexual preferences and credit card information in a data hack. Not only that, but people who have access to the data are now blackmailing the CEO and the people who used the app.
Let me start over, maybe you haven’t heard about the Ashley Madison app before. I didn’t either until recently (it might just be because I’m not 50 years old, married, desperate for an affair… or a man.. but those are just details I guess). Ashley Madison’s tagline leaves little to the imagination. “Life is short, have an affair.” It’s like someone took Tinder, drugged it with a Steroids and Viagra cocktail, and let it run rampant in Las Vegas. It’s insane that this website survived inconspicuously without backlash for 14 years, but the catastrophic end it built up to is indescribably satisfying to read about.
If you ask me, cheaters were getting screwed out of their money long before the hackers came along. When the app was at its peak, men had to have pretty deep pockets to even BE on the app. A man has to pay to initiate conversation with a woman, while women can send messages for free. And even if a woman messaged the man first, a man had to pay to even view the message. In order to continue messaging a woman, men had to pay again after a certain amount of allotted chat time ran out. Not only that, but due to the insane gender gap (men made up a whopping 70 percent of the demographic while women were somewhere around 30%) Ashley Madison generated FAKE female profiles which they claimed were for “entertainment purposes” that men still had to pay to talk to.
Here’s where it gets good.
On July 15, hackers stole all of Ashley Madison’s customer data and they threatened to leak all the information unless Ashley Madison and EstablishedMen.com (a website from the same parent company) were shut down permanently.
But a captain goes down with his ship. CEO Noel Biderman became steadfast in his company’s mission and wouldn’t give into this “cyber-terrorism.” This resulted in the first wave of customer names released.
On August 18, all the customer data was released on the Dark Web.
Then, as if the hackers would stop there, more data was released. This included the CEO’s e-mails and the names of people who paid a $19 fee to have their account deleted after the first breach, which of course the company kept records of. It’s hard to say how much they thought that one through.
As you can imagine, the aftermath of all this is an absolutely ironic, embarrassing catastrophe.
Lawyers are suing Ashley Madison for $760 million in damages on behalf of Canadian citizens alone.
According to MSN news and multiple other reports, numerous users of Ashley Madison have been contacted by blackmailers who accessed the database. They include messages like
“Consider how expensive a divorce lawyer is...If you are no longer in a committed relationship then think about how this will affect your social standing amongst family and friends.”
And…
“I now have your information. If you would like to prevent me from finding and sharing this information with your significant other send exactly 2.00000054 bitcoins (approx. value $450 USD) to the following address”
That's not all there is to the story. Over 15,000 government and military employees were caught on the site as well. Sensitive subject matter such as this is completely detrimental to their careers. Senators and celebrities like Josh Duggar from "19 Kids and Counting" certainly have a lot to answer to now.
Oh and let’s not forget about the upstanding CEO Noel Biderman. After trying to cover up the mess his adulterous business turned into and ignoring the demands of the hackers, he got a lovely message from them on the day that all the customer records got released. It read "Hey Noel, you can admit it's real now." These people will clearly not rest until they see this man shit his pants.
This is the work of absolute evil geniuses. Did they break the law? Maybe, I’m not a lawyer. Did they put a skeezy, disgusting, amoral propagator in his place? Completely. I only hope that this scandal can put some healthy fear into those who think they can magically become invisible online in hopes of cheating on someone they obviously don’t deserve.
Cheaters, beware the risk of exposure, because that's just the beginning of your worries.
