
Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me - kitd
http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/08/heres-what-ashley-madison-members-have.html
======
transfire
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?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>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.

~~~
Frondo
I care about cheating because it tells me that the person is OK with lying to
people close to them. If they're OK lying to their spouse, my concern is that
they're also OK lying to a customer.

If people want to have an open marriage or practice polyamory, fine, that's
entirely up to them.

The deception is the thing here that is problematic.

~~~
betenoire
And how do you know which is which? If you see a name that you recognize that
used AM, do you ask them to clarify which bucket they belong in, or do you
just assign them one yourself?

~~~
Frondo
The site, as far as I know, bills itself as a place to find cheating partners.

The poly people I know seem to have their own places for finding potential
relationship partners. The poly people I know are also all quite open about
their relationship choices.

If I saw a name I recognized on Ashley Madison, I'd assume they wanted to
cheat and keep that hidden from their partners.

~~~
betenoire
And that's my point. You get to pick how you judge them, and you do. You don't
hire cheaters, I don't hire judgers. To each his own.

------
jalanco
Reading this made me think about the hard problem of "removing" yourself from
the internet. I don't think it is possible. But I do think there might be an
opportunity for a service that creates so much conflicting and false
information about a person that it is not possible to know the truth about
them: false addresses, phone numbers, credit histories, you name it. Just a
thought.

~~~
njharman
Having lots of false information is (very) worse in many cases. People don't
know it's false and will assume it is true and about you. So, for instance if
this "False info Service" created an account (probably several) on AM, you'd
probably be unhappy now. Or posts on some nasty 4Chan that prospective
employers find. Or puts up false past address that happened to be the real
address of sex offender and now your name shows up next to it on
OMFGAMCGTBR.com. Or uses alias of some known criminal and a prosecutor
subpoenas "False info Service" to find the real name/address of this criminal,
you.

The only ways to not be embarrassed by what is online about you are. [And I
understand embarrassment is not the only reason to be anonymous, but if people
are honest with themselves it is 90% of the reason they care.]

1\. don't give a shit / don't be embarrassed / don't live by other's standards
or norms (this seems easiest to me but I'm sort of anti-social amoral and have
not been giving a shit what others values as they apply to me from a young
age, YMMV)

2\. Don't do embarrassing things. Sort of corollary of #1 (as in the less you
are embarrassed by the easier it is to not to embarrassing things.

3\. Don't live in modern society. Get born some place with no electricity and
kill (optionally eat) all the scientist who come to study/photograph you.

~~~
bnycum
To further go with this, I have a simple email I scored when gmail first
opened. Basically it's a single name with no extra characters. Anyways tons of
people sign up for things under that email, and that email is of course in the
Ashley Madison leak. It's also part of a ton of other leaks but it's never me.
Someone even has a facebook account under it that they won't let me delete.
People have used it for AT&T, Verizon, AllState, Honda. Hell even
FarmersOnly.com.

I had to stop using that email because of all this over the years. It's
unfortunate but this email address is tied to me, I've tried to erase my name
from it as much as I can on the Internet tying it to me over the years.

Mostly I just laugh it off, it's annoying. At least my wife knows I wouldn't
be on farmersonly.com.

~~~
whopa
Yeah, I have a firstinitialverycommonlastname@gmail.com address which is full
of misdirected email. I don't use it either, though it is my default throwaway
email for access walls (enter your email to read this article!) and the like.
Someone opened a facebook account with it, an instagram account with it, etc.

I get cell phone bills which you can't unsubscribe from, since the auth is
actually tied to the phone. I get tons of email newsletters. For a good chunk
of them the unsubscribe flow doesn't actually work, so I wind up marking them
as spam.

Apparently people signing up to gmail with bogus secondary recovery account
emails that Google has a whole flow for "disavow this email from your
account". I wind up using that flow 2-3 times a week.

The concept of email is hard I guess.

------
netcan
What I'm curious about is future changes in user behavior in response to this
kind of stuff. Private data, public data and the public-private grey areas
like pseudonymous posts, access restricted (FB-like) profiles and such are
getting leaked all the time.

Paranoia is definitely building. Awareness of how exposed people are is
building. Yet, exposure is going up not down. People are posting more stuff
online. I wonder if, for example, the cloud hack has impacted the trend of
people taking nude picture at all? I suspect it hasn't. I suspect that none of
these leaks will impact user behavior.

On one hand, a leak of an Ashley madison profile or salacious photos makes
people aware that the danger exists. On the other, it confirms how widespread
and normal it is to do these things.

Here's my (soft) prediction: Norms concerning fidelity and/or modesty will
give before online behavior does. If the choice is stop sending nudie pictures
or stop getting embarrassed when they leak, we'll go for the latter. For
infidelity… maybe strict monogamy will soften as a norm.

~~~
nyandaber
There's also the fact that for all those hacks, a non-negligeable portion of
the people think the victims "had it coming". They feel it's wrong to take
lewd pictures of yourself or join a site like Ashley Madison, so those hacks
are justice being served.

They don't see the real underlying issue about privacy and informatic data.
The day it's something more sensible like medical or financial records being
leaked, I hope they'll change their outlook at it.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>They don't see the real underlying issue about privacy and informatic data.

And many against even these hacks feel that the victims of hacks of hidden tor
services 'had it coming'. Most people think that a sufficiently immoral online
action means the hacked individual 'had it coming'. The difference is in what
counts as sufficiently moral, not in the underlying view of if it is possible
for someone to deserve to be hacked.

------
mayaross
One thing that struck me about this is that all the messages from people
worried their data are from men. Troy even states that explicitly: "very close
to 100% of the emails I got were about men having accounts on the site".

Why is that? Is it because men are more likely to cheat, or because men are
more likely to need the help of online services to do so?

I suspect both are true, but can say with confidence that the latter is
definitely true. Women don't need sites to help them cheat; all they have to
do is go out and they will be hunted down. As a woman I find this a clear sign
of the remaining, quite sinister, gender inequality.

~~~
transfire
You don't understand what it is like to be a man then. It has nothing to do
with "inequality". When it comes to sex it is woman that hold most of the
cards. For a man, unless they are handsome, wealthy and well endowed (i.e.
perfect) then they are at the mercy of women. Which means they have two
choices, they either "beg" for it or try to "take" it. Both come in a variety
of subtle and overt forms. In either case it is a very insecure state for a
single man. And ironically woman can sense that. Woman are always more
interested in the taken man because that insecurity is no longer present. So
in a cruel twist of fate, a taken man who struggled to woo his current mate
discovers now he has many more options for the taking.

~~~
roymurdock
I agree with you that women (and men for that matter) find confidence
attractive. You don't have to be in a relationship to be confident. I would be
careful of conflating the two.

From my experience, most women are not interested in holding sex as a trump
card. Like you and I, they are simply looking for companionship - for someone
they can count on for support and non-judgement during times of crisis, but
who will also push them to become better and achieve their goals. Like you and
I, most are at least partially attracted to looks, confidence, humor, power,
intellect, etc.

It sounds like you're pretty bitter about something or other. I think you
should make more friends that are women so that you can talk to them about the
way they view relationships.

~~~
cousin_it
> _It sounds like you 're pretty bitter about something or other. I think you
> should make more friends_

That's a pretty unkind thing to say to a stranger on the internet. I lose a
bit of faith in humanity every time I see such things.

~~~
roymurdock
I'm not trying to be mean. I'm pushing OP to reflect on why he holds some of
the viewpoints that he does.

I'm also not trying to imply that OP does not have enough friends. Just that
he might get a broader picture of women in general if he had more female
friends.

I read your edited comment about how that made you sad. A lot of things on HN
make me sad - there are many unnecessarily mean, rude, snarky comments posted
here with amazing regularity. I try to make helpful comments without putting
others down. I'm sorry if my comment came off in a negative manner. I'm not
trying to add to the general negativity of the site.

~~~
cousin_it
Fair enough. Sorry if my own comment was unnecessarily harsh.

~~~
roymurdock
No problem. See you around HN :)

------
DanielBMarkham
Immediately, somebody should begin a study on the impact of this data leak.
Millions of cheaters exposed? What will be the increase in counseling? Divorce
rate? What percentage of folks will carry on like nothing has happened?

It's an incredible story. I'm not sure the English language has a word to
describe this: watching millions of people go through marital pain all at the
same time. It's not a train wreck -- you can watch that and see that there are
real people suffering. This is all just some huge faceless mob.

I am reminded of Stalin's quote: when one man dies, it's a tragedy. When a
million men die, it's a statistic.

(I absolutely do not approve of lying and cheating on spouses. I will not keep
your secret for you. But I also do not approve on taking action that would
result in folks I do not know getting exposed. Folks have a right to their own
lives.)

~~~
NotOscarWilde
_> But I also do not approve on taking action that would result in folks I do
not know getting exposed. Folks have a right to their own lives._

I do not think there is such a right, because what you are describing is (in
probably many cases) a right to break an agreement (marriage in this case) and
keep pretending that you honor it until _you yourself_ disclose it.

In simpler terms: you may have "a right to your own life", but do you have a
right to lie to your partner?

~~~
TDL
Do you have right? Yes. Should you lie to your partner? Probably not. People
have the right to do many things, even if those things are not beneficial to
them in the long term.

~~~
true_religion
This isn't just an issue of lying or not lying to their partner.

Many people may have already worked out the cheating issue with their
partners, and put themselves past it. However, now their friends and coworkers
and neighbors can pretty easily search to see if they're in the dump. Not
because they need to know... just because they're curious.

I don't think these people need to be exposed to that kind of scrutiny.

------
danso
The section about how confused the layperson is about technical details, e.g.
what a database is and how the Internet generally works, makes me think that
this data release is going to exacerbate paranoia about data and the Internet
in general, rather than lead to a general awareness of better security
precautions. I think as more fallout happens, there will be an increased
sentiment in favor of such things as "right to be forgotten"...though perhaps
that's not such a bad thing if it is in the context of requiring companies to
wipe out old customer billing data upon request.

~~~
benevol
> is going to exacerbate paranoia about data and the Internet in general

Which seems rather appropriate given the extremely sick facts delivered to us
by Snowden on a silver plate and the absence of change of course of society.

~~~
Pyrodogg
You don't even have to get to the dump itself to see expressions of extreme
paranoia. See anyone in the media simply at a loss about 'the darkweb' and it
being so full of unknown things by its nature.

------
jacquesm
Think about how easy it would be to ruin someones reputation by signing them
up for all kinds of shady services and then waiting for the (inevitable)
breach.

Of course that possibility will not stop the witchhunt but I'm fairly sure
that at least a small percentage of the people in that database have no idea
they're even in it.

~~~
buro9
Or, run an internet forum and wait a while.

I've been signed up to so much over the years that I mostly ignore it now,
just unsub from the things I can and mark as spam everything else.

BTW, if anyone implements a "Thank you for signing up" email, please please
please put the original IP address used to sign up in the email along with the
"If this is not you". The few services that have done this have enabled me to
identify (from my own web server logs) the users of the forum(s) that have
been peeved at me on those days. That at least gives me the chance to talk to
them and stem the flow of porn emails (or whatever they've decided to sign me
up to).

~~~
bradleyankrom
> BTW, if anyone implements a "Thank you for signing up" email, please please
> please put the original IP address used to sign up in the email along with
> the "If this is not you".

+1; doing a macro-level lookup of the IP address's location would be useful,
too, for less tech-savvy consumers.

------
adriand
I'm not religious, but I think the appropriate quote here is: "Let him who is
without sin cast the first stone."

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Why would it be appropriate here when very few people hold such a view? A lot
of people say they don't judge others and think judging others is wrong, but
they are always limited in scope to some subset of judgments. They will often
be quick to judge a thief or worse who is on the stand.

In the original story this quote comes from, the one guilty was to be stoned
to death because they had committed a crime deserving the death penalty. In
comparison to crimes with similar punishment today, how many would say to not
judge a murderer unless you are blameless? Say it and mean it?

~~~
adriand
> the one guilty was to be stoned to death because they had committed a crime
> deserving the death penalty. In comparison to crimes with similar punishment
> today, how many would say to not judge a murderer unless you are blameless?

Surely you are aware that the "crime deserving the death penalty", in this
instance, was the "crime" of adultery. Based on that, I don't think your line
of questioning holds up.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
I don't see how our modern view of what was then a capital crime matters. When
the quote was said, it was said to a group who were asking to carry out a
death sentence for a capital crime. That is to say, the line of reasoning is
that you should not carry out an execution for a capital crime unless you are
without sin.

To insist that this quote only applies to adultery and not to other actions
which different societies may or may not judge as capital crimes is about as
meaningful as insisting that this literally means to not throw the first
stone, but other punishments, including other means of execution, are allowed.

~~~
adriand
I don't agree. I think that this quote expresses a more modern understanding
of human transgressions such as adultery than what was present in the culture
at that time. It called into question whether in fact capital punishment was
appropriate for a transgression of that sort.

I'm reminded of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's comment when
he defended a bill decriminalizing homosexual acts: "There's no place for the
state in the bedrooms of the nation".

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>I don't agree. I think that this quote expresses a more modern understanding
of human transgressions such as adultery than what was present in the culture
at that time. It called into question whether in fact capital punishment was
appropriate for a transgression of that sort.

Comes from the same set of books where anyone guilty of breaking one law is
guilty of breaking them all, and comes from the guy who claimed to not only be
the son of the one who made the laws that carried capital punishment, but who
was there to give people a way to not be punished regardless of the crime.
Nothing in His message was 'these crimes here are far worse than those crimes
there'.

As for the bedroom bit, I find that almost no one believe that as soon as you
have either money exchanging hands or some person who has been around the sun
one too few times.

------
myth_buster

      So got a call, from our church leaders yesterday, saying 
      my husband's work email was on [redacted], oh my! 
    

This is extremely irresponsible and repulsive! I'm surprised that some
organizations can take the liberty to encroach onto people's personal lives!

~~~
logfromblammo
If I got a call from a church, bearing gossip for the purposes of sowing
discord in my family, I would have an important conversation with my spouse
about immediately ending our relationship... with that church.

If you value families, you should not go around hammering wedges into every
crack you find in them.

------
sarciszewski
I'm still taken aback that a church would comb through the dump and email
peoples' spouses. Just terrible.

~~~
kitd
Yeah, that one has been bugging me all day for some reason. The utter
hypocrisy!

Of course, it may be that she is just a paranoid spouse but needs to concoct a
reason to look up her husband's email without sounding too paranoid.

Either way, it's sad beyond belief.

------
k__
As a poly guy I like how this incident holds a mirror up to society.

So many people who lied to everyone about how they believe in mongamy.

~~~
hn_thr0waway
+1. Getting on the soapbox... It's more sad than anything. Maybe some of the
poly world is looking at this and thinking, "See? I told you!" and maybe
feeling smug about the outing of hypocrites. What we really have here are
people who for whatever reason can't, won't, or don't go down the road of
consensual non-monogamy but their desires and needs don't go away so some of
them cheat. I think that's wrong, not because it's immoral, but because
they're engaged in lying, breaking trust, and hurting other people. The
dispersal of the account information is also hurting people and providing a
salacious topic for gossip when it's none of anyone's business but the people
involved. It's not my or anyone else's obligation to out someone who avoided
the communication, risk, and work for the consensual part of non-monogamy but
I believe I should avoid that person because they are not trustworthy and show
a lack of concern for other people. Exposing them publicly to prejudice and
ridicule confirms the worst attitudes about sex and love.

Sorry for the throwaway, my relationship status is no secret to family,
friends, and colleagues but I don't want my private life public.

------
JupiterMoon
What is the legal status of looking at hacked datasets like this?

~~~
edent
In the UK, it looks like a breach of the Data Protection Act -
[https://iconewsblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/personal-
data-i...](https://iconewsblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/personal-data-in-
leaked-datasets-is-still-personal-data/)

Likely to be similar across Europe.

~~~
pluma
I'm not entirely sure about that.

It's personal data in the sense that you're likely not allowed to process them
(as a business or corporation -- whether for commercial use or not). But most
of these laws are written for companies and for individuals granted access to
personal information by those companies.

As a person you're certainly not allowed to distribute the information (or at
least not any personally identifiable parts of it) but mere "looking at them"
doesn't seem like it would be a breach in and of itself.

The article you linked would indicate this: looking at the data isn't a breach
of the data protection act, it merely means whatever you do with the data
falls under the provisions of that act, limiting what you can do with it.

~~~
JupiterMoon
That is what I took from the link as well. It is OK to get hold of the data.
However, it is a crime e.g.: to use it to personally identify someone, or to
distribute it (even accidentally! (you have obligations under the data
protection act to prevent this)) (this would probably also cover using
torrents to download it).

So in the UK be careful and anonomise it _before_ working with it -- as is
required with e.g. similar (legally obtained) datasets in the social sciences.
Then totally delete the raw dataset from your system -- otherwise if you e.g.
lose your laptop you become liable for any further re-distribution.

Not planning on looking at it anyway.

------
formichunter
In northern virginia, fairfaxunderground website, was nice enough to parse
only information pertinent to this area. Now, everybody and their friends have
searched through it looking for people they know. My wife actually found a
good friend's dad listed twice...and he's still married. So, now all those
facebook connection have this awkward knowledge and no one will tell the
friend.

~~~
ryanackley
Is it "nice" to encourage violating other people's privacy?

Spouses are the real victims in these situations. Part of the pain of
infidelity is the humiliation. Airing a whole community's dirty laundry just
makes it worse for the victims.

~~~
balabaster
Can you clarify your meaning of community in this context? You mean the AM
community or the "victim's" community? Also, who are you referencing as the
victim, the person who had their data leaked or those affected by the fallout?

In the context of those affected by the fallout, if enough are affected, then
one could claim the opposite: That it makes it easier knowing that so many
were affected that nobody is passing any judgment on their specific incident
because everyone is in the same boat - thus the humiliation is actually less.

------
known
WTF [http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/08/21/ashley-madison-
india...](http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/08/21/ashley-madison-
india_n_8020242.html)

~~~
pluma
Prior to seeing that map I wasn't even aware the service operated in Europe. I
wonder what the actual user numbers look like across the globe.

------
coldcode
People who seriously used this site made their own bed and will have to lie in
it, that's their life to live. But attacking this bunch of idiots at Avid Life
is fair game; their security was stupid on a mega scale.

------
everyone
Anyone else think this is funny?

~~~
simondelacourt
In this case;
[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_i...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11500538)
you might call it funny. But I'd probably call it sad.

I don't think that exposing peoples private lives, even though they did
something wrong, on this scale is remotely funny. I think it is quite sad. It
does not only effect the members of the site, but also their families, the
company they work at, etc.. This breach has so much collateral damage.

I can not really understand how it is funny.

~~~
ams6110
It's not funny, it's tragic -- which can have a element of dark humor. It's
exposing several dark facets of human nature: the desire to cheat on one of
the most solemn commitments a person can make, and the vengeful joy others
take in seeing those cheaters exposed.

------
venomsnake
If you get caught red handed (or offend someone, or stuff like that) - never
explain, never complain and under no circumstances - apologize. Neither of
those things will help to improve your outcomes. And the people writing often
break all 3 of them.

You can go on offensive though (also known as the half Trump).

Basic rules of maleness.

