The Day Someone Signed Me Up For An Ashley Madison Account (That Day Would Be Yesterday)
from the so-creative dept
We've written a few times now about the leak of data from Ashley Madison, the "dating site for people who want to cheat on their spouses," mostly discussing the company's bizarre infatuation with abusing copyright law to try to take down anyone posting content from the leak. We haven't taken part in any of the stories about naming and shaming individuals who have been found in the database (or just where they might work). As a lot of people have been noting (thankfully) in their stories, for no clear reason, Avid Life Media (the company that owns Ashley Madison) doesn't do email verification. That means anyone can create an account using anyone else's email address. In fact, last month, reporter Farai Chideya noted that someone had created an account using her email.And, apparently, someone thought it would be funny to do the same to me. Yesterday afternoon, I got a message telling me "Welcome to Day 1 of your Ashley Madison Experience." Someone using my email signed me up, using the rather creative account name "masnicator." I'm kinda surprised that Ashley Madison is still even allowing online signups (let alone not using an email verification system, or for that matter even keeping the site up at all). But, perhaps even more ridiculous is that in the "welcome" email, it highlights how the service is "100% Secure."
As if to hammer home just how bogus the whole thing is, the site sent me another email just a few hours later, claiming that it was showing me new people who had just signed up near me. Of course, if anyone is actually "signing up" now, I'm guessing it's for the same reason that someone signed me up: to mess with people or to joke around.
Not sure why whoever did this did this, though, I guess thanks for the story?
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Filed Under: email verification, trolls
Companies: ashley madison
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Come on Mike, it's not like you don't read the comments.
At some point one of our trolls will confuse sites and post here using the nick "wtf15604". No?
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"I guess thanks for the story?".
See, his wife did it so that he can have more stories to post but Mike was really the mastermind behind the whole ordeal. and you and I the readers fall for it.
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I don't have access to the Crystal Ball, but my guess is that Techdirt rarely (if ever) lacks material for stories.
People/companies/governments are constantly doing/saying stupid shit these days.
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Ok, since someone will mistaken this for a serious post I will put a /sarc tag
/sarc
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Sarcasm baseline adjustment in progress...please wait [/]
Ok. Better now. Sometimes it gets misaligned from reading too many Anonymous Coward posts.
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I would never be that careless.
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Only two people would ever know about this except that you DID make it a story!
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Re: Only two people would ever know about this except that you DID make it a story!
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Re: Only two people would ever know about this except that you DID make it a story!
What mistake?
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Re: Only two people would ever know about this except that you DID make it a story!
When reading this article my first thought was that you, Blue, where responsible for this.
It doesn't seem out of character that you would do this and then use it as some sort of ammo the next time an article on this subject came up. This would be right in line with your overwhelming obsession to discredit Techdirt at any cost.
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Re: Re: Only two people would ever know about this except that you DID make it a story!
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Re: Re: Only two people would ever know about this except that you DID make it a story!
It would also be the first time he had something factual and non-tangential to work with. You can only run with "Mike noted that piracy isn't the worst thing ever therefore he's a pirate" and "Mike publicised Google sponsorship on another site therefore he works for them" so many times before even the obsessed stalker gets bored. Why not create actual "evidence" from hand so there's soemthing concrete to point to?
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Re: Only two people would ever know about this except that you DID make it a story!
Must be Friday!!!
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Re: Only two people would ever know about this except that you DID make it a story!
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The beast, so bloated, did not notice its mortal wounds and keep trudging forward. Messages sent, flirtations imagined, all to get another monthly fee - unaware that the transactions would not finish. Another sign up, see how special and shiny we are, give us money, send flirtation #28972... the money will flow as the zombie beast kept plodding forward.
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The size of the erm.... pocket book.
I have seem more than enough fugly doods with smoakin hot chicks... don't kid yourself.
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It's a feature
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It could just be the 15604th account they made? Probably all copy and paste
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They'll delete it for only $19. :-)
I too am quite astonished they're still even in business, much less accepting (or receiving) new signups, and still not bothering to verify email addresses! You'd have to be living in a cave to not know about ALM's shenanigans by now. I'd never even heard of them before these stories broke.
The story on Wired actually lauds them for not being too bad at IT noting they even used bcrypt. Now you know what Wired's opinions are worth if you didn't before.
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C'mon, this is great!
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Usual Suspects
I'm just saying...
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Re: Usual Suspects
I'm just saying...
Or maybe that Glyn guy... this seems just like him. ;)
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Demographics of New Signups
1) clueless dolts who wanna cheat on their wives, and read absolutely NO news from any source.
2) dudes getting punked by their locker-room buddies or by other miscreants.
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Karma's a bitch, eh?
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I'm trying my hardest to figure out what you think this means. If someone signing me up for this, which has no impact on anything, other than that I got three random emails (and a good story to post on the blog), is "karma" then it sounds like I'm living a pretty clean life, huh?
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A priest visits a sex shop...
At the pay desk he says: "I want to have some information for my sermon next week."
The shop assistant: "That's what they all say!"
That's what this article made me think about, somebody else signed me in, that's what they ALL say...
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Re: A priest visits a sex shop...
Ha! Yes. Though, at least this happened *after* the hack, so it's not like my info shows up in the leaked data that everyone's searching through.
Though, since posting this I've heard from a couple friends (both with somewhat generic emails) that say their emails got included a while back. I tend to believe them, but it is interesting.
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Same issue, other sites...
I not long after that and I think on 2 different occasions had the same issue at Facebook. But hard to contact facebook regardless of whether u have an account. The only time they responded to me I do not know how I contacted them in such a way that I got a response but they told me basically to go get a lawyer if I do not like it. The only thing I could do was to (claim it) by doing a password change request as my only method of getting the account deleted.
Would be that the site you are referencing were the only offender but bigger fish are doing the same thing.
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:)
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I'm not suprised.
He has had a hard on for you for a long time, either that or that douchebag lobbyist, he was creepy enough.
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1) Create
2) Leak
3) ?
4) Profit
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