Name: Ashley Madison.
Age: That would be telling.
Appearance: Discreet, subtle but, you know, up for it.
Is this a male Ashley or a female Ashley? Neither. It’s a corporate Ashley. Ashley Madison is the name of a website founded in Toronto in 2001, which sells married people the opportunity to connect with each other and have affairs.
Ah, yes. I’ve heard of that. But why can’t married people just have sex with their workmates as usual? Oh you know, it can get complicated. Plus not everybody has workmates they want sex with.
Nonsense! I’d gladly have sex with you. Thanks. Anyway, Ashley Madison is in trouble because its ultra-sensitive customer data has just been breached by a hacker or hackers unknown.
Would you have sex with me? The hackers call themselves the Impact Team, and claim to have accessed the entire database of Ashley Madison’s 37m users and the 1.3m users of Established Men (matching older men with younger women). They have already released some credit card details and company documents, and are threatening to publish everything else unless the parent company Avid Life Media shuts both sites down.
Are these family-values hackers then? No. They say they are responding to the fact that Ashley Madison charges departing users $19 to conduct a “full delete” of their data. (Although they can leave and become nearly untraceable for free.)
So they are online privacy campaigners, but they are trying to get their way with a massive breach of online privacy? That’s right. If their demands are not met, they promise to release “all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies, nude pictures, and conversations and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses”.
A bit hypocritical maybe? Or maybe a bit personal. Avid Life Media says it suspects an inside job. “We’re on the doorstep of [confirming] who we believe is the culprit, and unfortunately that may have triggered this mass publication,” says the site’s founder Noel Biderman. “I’ve got their profile right in front of me, all their work credentials. It was definitely a person here that was not an employee but certainly had touched our technical services.”
Do you at least think I’m attractive? This comes just four months after a hack on Adult FriendFinder, which revealed the unusual sexual preferences of 3.5m people.
Do say: “Life is short. Have an affair.”
Don’t say: “But also unpredictable. Get a lawyer.”
