Ashley Madison Hack: User Data For Affairs Website At Risk Of Being Leaked, 'Non-Compliance Will Cost You' [PHOTO]
37 Million users of a website known for promoting extramarital affairs could be at risk of their personal information being exposed and their big secrets outed after a hacker group completely took over the site's parent company.
The site, Ashley Madison, which has a tagline of 'Life is Short. Have an Affair," was targeted by a group calling themselves The Impact Team, who successfully took over the site over the weekend and have threatened to leak the identities and information of the users on it if the sites are not taken down permanently.
Among the information the group is reportedly threatening the reveal is names, addresses and sexual fantasies.
On the site, (which appears to temporarily be taken down), the hacker group posted a message threatening to expose everything because of issues they have the site's parent company, Avid Life Media, and several of the sites they run, which include Ashley Madison, Cougar Life and Established Men. Currently, the hack has targeted and shut down both Ashley Madison and Established Men.
"AM and EM must shut down immediately permanently...Shutting down AM and EM will cost you but non-compliance will cost you more," the message on the site warns. "We will release all customer records, profiles with all of the customers' secret sexual fantasies, nude pictures, and conversations and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails. Avid Life Media will be liable for fraud and extreme harm to millions of users."
"Avid Life Media runs Ashley Madison, the internet's #1 cheating site, for people who are married or in a relationship to have an affair," the statement continues. "ALM also runs Established Men, a prostitution/human trafficking website for rich men to pay for sex, as well as cougar life, a dating website for cougars , man crunch, a site for gay dating, swappernet for swingers, and the big and the beautiful, for overweight dating."
According to Gawker, the reason for the hack appears to be the Impact Team's issues with the Full Delete feature Ashley Madison allegedly offers users for $19.00. The service is supposed to allow users of the site to erase their profile and all accompanying information entirely, something the group says is a lie. While profile information is removed, credit card details, as well as real names and billing addresses to remain online.
As of press time, no personal user information has been leaked.
