Online cheating network Ashley Madison has reportedly been hacked, compromising the user databases, financial records and private details of the service’s owners and 37 million users.
Avid Life Media, the company that runs Ashley Madison and two other sites for users to arrange what it calls “discreet encounters” with married people, confirmed the report, The Verge reported.
A hacking group calling itself The Impact Team claimed to be behind the breach. Hackers said Avid Life Media “has been instructed” to take Ashley Madison “offline permanently in all forms,” or they will release “all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret relations and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails.” Other ALM sites, the group said, may stay online.
Launched in 2001, Ashley Madison is an online cheating service which is for those who are already in relationship. According to SimilarWeb service, the controversial site, which is based in Canada, has over 124 million visitors per month.
The infidelity service offers a “full delete” feature by which it offers to scrub users’ payment and address details from its records for a $19 fee, a fee that The Impact Team claimed to be demanded for nothing.
“Full Delete netted ALM $1.7 million in revenue in 2014.”
The group did not offer much sympathy for people who would be exposed. “Too bad for those men,” the document read. “They’re cheating … and deserve no such discretion.”
