Extremely scuzzy website hacked

[Elok]

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33592594

Famous adultery-facilitating website Ashley Madison has been hacked. The hackers claim they have basically everything, including credit card numbers and sexual fantasies, and intend to release it in bits and pieces until such time as the site is shut down. Most interestingly, they claim to have information even on users who paid to delete their accounts--AM kept some of their information back. Comments on a security site linked to by the article suggest that perhaps they kept billing info to prove someone had paid to have their account deleted, which sorta defeats the whole point. Dunno. The hackers, as usual, posted a long manifesto explaining their reasons, which AFAICT boil down to:

A. That 'delete' thing is fraudulent.
B. You guys are all *******s and deserve this anyway.

Probably both are true, though I feel obligated to say, reluctantly, that yes, the hackers should be prosecuted.

[giblets]

Elok is a nerd.

[giblets]

This site is running slow... I think HACKERS might be destroying it

[Sava]

B. You guys are all *******s and deserve this anyway.

Yes. Consenting adults living their lives.

Grow up.

Also, people deserve to be doxed, blackmailed, have their identities stolen perhaps... they deserve to be the victim of crimes...

just because you disapprove of their behavior

**** you

sanctimonious ****head

i'll pray that god forgives you for being such an *******

[Guynemer]

Sava, that's what the hackers are claiming, not Elok. Slow your roll.

[Sava]

dont ruin this for me

[Sava]

[giblets]

Consenting adults breaking their marriage vows and being dishonest

[Sava]

people minding their own business

[giblets]

People deserve to know if their spouse is a cheating bastard. Sava wants to sleep with married women

[Sava]

it isn't my place to meddle in the affairs of someone else's failed relationship

[Elok]

In general, I do not believe in vigilante justice. I am playing a very tiny violin for these people, mind you. And I don't really mind your disapproval too much, Sava, since you throw down similar amounts of hellfire on somebody who admits to, say, liking one of Ronald Reagan's old movies.

[-Jrabbit]

To be fair, Reagan's movies were pretty universally terrible.

Also, cheating on one's spouse does not justify identity theft.

And Elok, if you really don't support vigilantism in general, this is exactly the kind of take-no-prisoners attack that you should be most opposed to.

[Elok]

No, the kind of take-no-prisoners attack I should be most opposed to would involve shooting up a public building to kill an escaped convict or something. This is small potatoes. The company is rushing to take down every revelation, I assume everyone who has ever signed up with AM is frantically coming up with an excuse to cancel his credit card, and with tens of millions of users it's unlikely the majority of them will ever have a real chance of getting caught (are suspicious wives going to download all the revelations in an enormous Access file and query for Hubby?). More likely the chief long-term consequence of this will be to teach a lot of people not to put their names and cash in the big box that says PUT NAME AND MONEY HERE IF YOU WANT TO CHEAT ON YOUR SPOUSE in big flashy letters. Also AM might be ruined.

FWIW, I don't really believe that the hackers are "angry" about the false-deletion thing; punishing the company for failing to protect their clients by hurting said exposed clients makes no sense. I imagine a handful of angry cuckolds are responsible, though we'll likely never know either way.

[giblets]

(are suspicious wives going to download all the revelations in an enormous Access file and query for Hubby?).

Why not?