Ashley Madison homepage (Photo : Reuters)
A $578 million class-action lawsuit was filed by a pair of Canadian law firms on August 20, Thursday, representing around 39 million Canadian subscribers to the adultery website, after their personal information was released to the public. However, many victims of the security breach are more anxious about their financial information such as their credit card details being released, than the details of the extramarital affair.
Ottawa widower Eliot Shore is the plaintiff. He used the website to look for companionship after his wife passed away due to breast cancer. Shore explained that he never met anyone on the website, nor cheated.
The privacy breech exposed about 39 million members of the website. They stole the site users' names, home addresses, and emails, and then made the information public this week.
It is a well-known fact that some cheaters on spouses are more skilled than others, taking precautions such as creating secret email accounts. However, all cheaters were exposed in the recent hack.
Based on the data breach, some of the site's customers even completed credit-card transactions from computers linked to Canadian governmental offices. The hack also exposed personal information from U.S. workers in the White House and Congress, according to 14 News.
In their statement the law firms noted that several former users of the site had paid a "kill fee" before the breach happened. However, they learned later that their data was unchanged and vulnerable.
The law firms will not sue the hackers, dubbed "Impact Team." That is because they claimed they stole data to punish the website for not deleting users' information after they received a fee.
Some people argue that the key issue related to the hack was the major security breach, and not whether cheating is immoral.
Tech experts explain that it is more difficult to find and view people's personal details than is reported by the media, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. That includes details about an Ashley Madison account.
Also, in many cases the person cheated on might have no relationship with the cheater now. However, issues related to hacked financial data still exist.
Ashley Madison is a Canada-based online dating service that was launched in 2001.However Its slogan is "Life is short. Have an affair."
