Two Suicides Reportedly Linked to the Ashley Madison Info Leak | lovebscott.com

Two Suicides Reportedly Linked to the Ashley Madison Info Leak

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Last week, adult affair website Ashley Madison was hacked and the personal info of millions of people who had registered was made publicly available to the Internet. According to reports, the leak has triggered extortion crimes and has already led to two unconfirmed reports of suicides, Canadian police said Monday.

via NY Post:

The company behind Ashley Madison is offering a $500,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of members of a group that hacked the site.

Hackers last week released detailed records on millions of people registered with the website, a month after a break-in at Ashley Madison’s parent company, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc. The website, whose slogan is, “Life is short. Have an affair,” is marketed to facilitate extramarital affairs.

Toronto police acting staff Supt. Bryce Evans said the hack is having an “enormous social and economic fallout.”

“This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world,” Evans said. “This is affecting all of us. The social impact behind this leak, we’re talking about families, we’re talking about children, we’re talking about wives, their male partners.”

The hackers who took responsibility for the break-in had accused the website’s owners of deceit and incompetence, and said the company refused to bow to their demands to close the site. The hackers referred to themselves as the Impact Team.

Evans said the hackers released the entire Ashley Madison client list, which claims to have more than 30 million users worldwide. He said the hackers also sent a taunting message to the company CEO and released his emails.

Evans said there are confirmed cases of criminals attempting to extort Ashley Madison clients by threatening to expose them unless payment is received.

The police official did not offer further details of the unconfirmed suicides. He also said hate crimes may be connected to the hack but did not provide details.

Evans addressed the hackers directly, saying their actions are “illegal and will not be tolerated.”

“This is your wake-up call,” he said. A representative of the US Department of Homeland Security attended the news conference.

Love muffins, heed this as a warning. None of your online activities are completely safe. While it’s reasonable to expect certain things will stay private, nothing’s guaranteed.

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