Ashley Madison Sued for Poor Data Protection, Users Report Receving Blackmail

During a news conference on Monday, Toronto Police Acting Staff Superintendent Bryce Evans said the attack on the cheating website triggered attempts to extort money from the exposed Ashley Madison users. In a statement, the company said, “We will not sit idly by and allow these thieves to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world”.

“This massive data breach could have been prevented had [Ashley Madison] taken the necessary and reasonable precautions to protect its users’ information by, for example, encrypting the data entrusted to it by its users on a database level”, according to the complaint. The site, which is owned by Avid Life Media, bears the slogan “Life is short”. And we’ve even learned which three zip codes in America were the only ones without Ashley Madison accounts.

But then a group of hackers, known as the Impact Team, last week released emails, full names, street addresses and some credit card information for their tens of millions of users.

That suit claims that an unnamed employee at Ashley Madison listed for the site “technical issues that could lead to a data breach occurring, as well the legal problems that may come with that”.

Love lives and reputations may be at risk after the release of customer data from infidelity website Ashley Madison, an unprecedented breach of privacy likely to rattle users’ attitudes towards the Internet.

It was especially of concern for those “who didn’t necessarily do anything on the site, or follow through on the site”, he said.

“The administration has started an investigation to see if any agency policies were violated, and the agencies will take appropriate action”, Kelly said in an email.

The adultery website targeted by hackers is offering a 500,000 Canadian dollar (£240,000) reward for information about those behind the leak.

In the same source, Mr. Evans was reported to have explained that the hack has already resulted to a series “spin-offs of crimes and further victimization”.

“I keep seeing that headline, but I’m bad – I don’t know what it is”, he confessed to a Washington Post reporter when he was asked about the hack of the risqué website, which exposed the contact information of millions of its users. Hundreds of email addresses in the data release appear to be connected to federal, provincial and municipal workers across Canada.