Ashley Madison data leaked - here come the divorces
As we wrote recently, hackers have stolen the customer database of "life is short, have an affair" site Ashley Madison, which has many UK users among its global membership. Some of the details of these users have now been published online by the hackers. This happened because the site owner failed to meet the hackers' demand to shut the service down.
Now, anyone can check an email address to find out if their other half had signed up for the service. Naturally, journalists have been dumpster diving into the database and found the emails of politicians, Ministry of Defence staff and doubtless many more high profile targets. But, with the tabloid nature of these stories, it won't take long until anyone who had hoped to stay anonymous, but was indiscreet enough to use their standard email address for the service, will get found out.
That will likely generate a raft of divorce cases, arouse greater suspicion of infidelity, and increase the number of professional investigators being used to carry out matrimonial investigations. To find out if someone has been using the service, there are several query tools you can use to check an email address against the leaked database, such as haveibeenpwned.com.
However, not all the data has been leaked and it is possible the hackers are holding back a trove of IDs with the potential to blackmail the users, or to publish them in a more public manner at a later date. Of course, many email addresses could be fake, generic, or from compromised accounts, so some people may be innocent, despite looking guilty.
The wider implications of this hack include other hackers harvesting the data, and sending bulk blackmail or threatening emails to subscribers, or using social media to track people down and embarrass them in front of their online friends. While Ashley Madison's password files were protected by encryption, there is also a risk they could be broken and users who have the same password for many sites could find their other accounts accessed.
For those who are found out, they will be asking if it was worth the risk, but those who were cheated on are the true victims, and our detective services can help find more evidence on cheating partners.