Marital Infidelity Site AshleyMadison Hacked, But Claims No One Should Worry Since It DMCA'd All Leaked Copies

from the wait,-what? dept

As you my have heard by now, on Sunday, online security super reporter Brian Krebs revealed that the infamous "dating site for married people who want to cheat on their spouse," AshleyMadison had its systems hacked, with whoever is responsible claiming to have basically everything. Apparently the site (and a few other similar sites run by the company) had 37 million registered users, many of which are probably a bit more worried about their information leaking publicly than they were a couple days ago.

But, no worry, claims the company to a reporter at Wired: it's issued takedowns to everyone who posted the info, so problem solved:

In a followup statement to WIRED from Avid Life Media Monday morning, the company writes that it has used copyright infringement takedown requests to have “all personally identifiable information about our users” deleted from the unnamed websites where it was published.

First off, what? Anyone who actually believes that DMCA takedown notices actually stopped this information from being available is probably also busy shipping the contents of his or her bank accounts to friendly princes-in-need across the Atlantic. Second, what? The company has no "copyright" claim in the information in question in the first place, and issuing a copyright/DMCA takedown doesn't make any sense at all, other than in a sort of desperate "please save us!" attempt to not have the company be completely destroyed by this incredible data breach. While perhaps some sites actually took the information down, there is simply no legitimate reason to use a copyright takedown claim to do so.

Meanwhile, others are pointing out that the site already leaked information about who had accounts if you knew what to look for -- and, somewhat ridiculously had bragged about its security in the past. Back in November of last year, after a bunch of celebrity nude photos leaked on the internet, AshleyMadison had a PR person reach out to me (and others) talking up AshleyMadison's privacy and security features: Note: "the company takes every measure possible to ensure the safety of their members' information...." Or, maybe not. It also seems worth noting that the hackers are claiming to release this information because the company charged an extra fee to supposedly delete all of your info from its servers... but, according to the hacker, did not do so. And, of course, that might mean that the company is facing fraud charges beyond just having its basic business destroyed. But, no worries, I'm sure the company will look to use copyright law to fix that too...

Filed Under: cheating, copyright, dmca, hacking, infedility, privacy, takedown
Companies: ashleymadison, avid life media