Does your spouse seem to be a little worried right about now?

One would hope there would be less illegal methods by which a group could expose allegedly dishonest business practices.

LittlePinto said:

One would hope there would be less illegal methods by which a group could expose allegedly dishonest business practices.

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What would be the motivation for seeking less illegal methods?

Sounds like someone paid the $19 and still got outed and decided on payback. Weird that they apologized to the security director. Makes me think it was an inside job.

kuwisdelu said:

What would be the motivation for seeking less illegal methods?

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Achieving your goal without getting arrested or making it possible for the company to play victim, thereby drawing attention from your point?

LittlePinto said:

Achieving your goal without getting arrested or making it possible for the company to play victim, thereby drawing attention from your point?

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How likely is it they will be arrested?

Does anyone actually buy it when a company plays a victim in a hacking? I don't. I would blame the company for being vulnerable enough to be hacked. I might be mildly annoyed at the hackers, but I would be far more pissed at the company for their inadequate security.

It's interesting that none of those reasons are moral reasons but practical reasons.

My wife once said, "Anyone who's interested in my husband is no threat to me."

I think that was a compliment...

Guess its a good thing I waited to sign up until AFTER the hack... No wait. I'm not married, they won't take me.

So in order to demonstrate that a company holds on to information they could use to do negatively effect their users' lives, these modern-day knights of the internet ...release that information and negatively effect the users' lives?

I guess I don't like it when people use actual people like pawns to make a point.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding something. The article title says the hackers threaten to release sensitive information while the body of the article seems to be saying the information was released.

I didn't know they charged people money to permanently delete their account. That's nasty.

Hacking is bad.

However.

I feel zero sympathy for the chumps who signed up.

kuwisdelu said:

How likely is it they will be arrested?

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It depends on if they're smarter than the users of AshleyMadison or not.

kuwisdelu said:

Does anyone actually buy it when a company plays a victim in a hacking? I don't. I would blame the company for being vulnerable enough to be hacked. I might be mildly annoyed at the hackers, but I would be far more pissed at the company for their inadequate security.

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Yes, people buy it. Also, I highly doubt there is any security system in the world that is completely impregnable. Even if the system works well, there's always social engineering.

kuwisdelu said:

It's interesting that none of those reasons are moral reasons but practical reasons.

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Well, yeah. I kind of figured the questionable morality of hacking was a given. Hackers are, after all, stealing private information.

Judging from the difficulty my husband had trying to book an Airbnb stay for his upcoming film festival, I feel safe that if he ever did try to sign up for Ashley Madison, he'd have to come ask me for help.

Only if the dating sites are full of women who have plugs, engines, a hard drive or can fly when controlled remotely . If she's called Mech Warrior. Honda Goldwing or Harley he might just be interested. But only if her spark plugs are iin top condition.

Hey, thanks for ruining the sanctity of marriage, Ashley Madison. Couldn't have done it without your help.

LittlePinto said:

Yes, people buy it. Also, I highly doubt there is any security system in the world that is completely impregnable. Even if the system works well, there's always social engineering.

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There is almost never a hacking story that goes: "company X did everything right; the hackers were just that damn good." It almost always goes: "company X did incredibly stupid thing that violates security 101 and hackers walked in the open door".

Well, yeah. I kind of figured the questionable morality of hacking was a given.

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You did? I didn't. Oops.

Hackers are, after all, stealing private information.

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That seems like an oddly specific — and incorrect — definition of hacking.

LittlePinto said:

One would hope there would be less illegal methods by which a group could expose allegedly dishonest business practices.

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kuwisdelu said:

What would be the motivation for seeking less illegal methods?

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How about while nobody is going to feel sorry for Ashley Madison members cheating on their spouses, yet again we're reminded anyone of us at anytime is subject to having our entire online life exposed for the rest of the world to see? It's not that anyone should feel sorry for them, but we should be concerned when we receive yet another reminder there is no privacy anywhere and least of all on the Internet.

...yesterday, hackers compromised cheater/dating site Ashley Madison and threatened to leak the identities of 37 million users unless the site is shut down immediately. The hackers claim to be alerting the public to the fact that the site's $19 "full delete" option, which purports to allow customers to permanently delete their records, doesn't actually do what it claims. So the hacker group is courageously defending online privacy by ... violating other people's online privacy. If Ashley Madison and the date-a-wealthy-dude site Established Men aren't permanently shut down, the hackers claim that they'll publish customer records, allegedly including nude photos and private sexual fantasies. The hackers wrote, "Too bad for those men, they're cheating dirt-bags and deserve no such discretion."

Which is to say: So-called cheating dirt-bags don't deserve to be protected from public shame granted by the entire globe, likely affecting their ability to find future employment, secure custody of their kids, and have any kind of peace of mind about love, friendships, and family relationships moving forward, but they do deserve a "permanent delete" option that actually works.

Let's back up for a minute and consider this new world, in which personal values might be policed by a gaggle of reporters, hackers, and onlookers. Keep in mind, the parties in question aren't tracking down pedophiles or murderers or those who commit hate crimes. They are seeking out and shaming regular human beings who had the audacity to seek sex outside of marriage.

Before you dredge up the image of every no-good cheater you've ever known, consider the many fallible individuals in the world who fall in love, get married, have children, and then find themselves questioning their sexuality, questioning their gender identity, or (less provocatively) simply questioning their lifelong choice of sexual partner. Maybe a spouse simply has a weak moment and makes a mistake. Sometimes people marry the wrong person. Sometimes people cheat and regret it immediately. Do we really want to indiscriminately drag every last one of these people into the middle of town and set their lives on fire for them?

As easy as it is to chuckle at a bunch of douchebag dudes getting outed for cheating, consider for a minute the full scope of ramifications endemic to our new, easily hacked lives. Every last one of us is hopelessly vulnerable to hacking today, thanks to insecure smartphones; insecure databases; absurd, ever-changing, and increasingly invasive Terms of Service; and supposedly benevolent megacorporations that illegally suck private data off unsecured Wi-Fi systems and legally compile private information gleaned from multiple apps to sell it to data brokers like Experian who might, in turn, haplessly sell it to Vietnamese identity-theft crime rings. If that sounds like some kind of Orwellian paranoid fantasy, it may be time to wake up and smell your credit-card numbers hitting the Dark Web.

But who knows? Maybe your smartphone and your computer are both encrypted and you change your 15-character passwords regularly. Maybe you don't happen to trust Google or Facebook or any email program and you don't use apps and you're essentially a Luddite who gives every sophisticated modern appliance the side-eye. Maybe you don't have and will never buy an appliance with a built-in recorder or camera, maybe you live far from people who own drones, maybe you never visit outdoor malls or any space that's videotaped 24/7, maybe you have no credit cards and have never applied for a government job and have no social security number. Maybe you've never strayed from your marriage, said the wrong thing about a co-worker, made an off-color joke in an email, taken a nude photo, aired an embarrassing secret in an anonymous online forum, paired up with a partner others might consider inappropriate, or made any other manner of very private fumble or mistake (or engaged in any behavior that others might see as a mistake) over the course of your lifetime. But if any of the above is true for you — and unless you're living in a shotgun shack in Outer Mongolia, I'm going to guess it is — then you're vulnerable.

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I notice none of the Usual Suspects who typically run to and fro screaming bloody murder when its the government peeking into their emails, favorite websites and online history have not weighed in or aren't similarly honked off when its self-styled moralists outing adulterers.

Privacy, like free speech, isn't reserved for only for ourselves and the people we like.

nighttimer said:

I notice none of the Usual Suspects who typically run to and fro screaming bloody murder when its the government peeking into their emails, favorite websites and online history have not weighed in or aren't similarly honked off when its self-styled moralists outing adulterers.

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What, it's weird I hold the government and criminals to different standards?

Well, I guess Don would question the difference. I guess I often do, too.

kuwisdelu said:

What, it's weird I hold the government and criminals to different standards?

Well, I guess Don would question the difference. I guess I often do, too.

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Don doesn't discern much difference between the government and criminals.

Vince524 said:

Government officials do usually wear nicer suits.

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We obviously hang with a different set of criminals.

nighttimer said:

Privacy, like free speech, isn't reserved for only for ourselves and the people we like.

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Indeed. I might loathe adulterers but they have just as much a right to expect that their private information will remain between them and the parties they consent to share it with as celebrities have the right to store nude photos online without fear that they'll end up in the tabloids.