The fact that Ashley Madison, a website for married cheaters, has been hacked and a partial list of names has been posted online is sending shivers down the spines of Ashley Madison users . As reported by the Inquisitr , it was Brian Krebs who exposed and received the Ashley Madison hack information, along with a link to download the text files with a partial list of the hacked names of users.
@PAULANEALMOONEY yes, they sent me direct links to it. I’m not republishing them because I don’t wish to be party to their extortion
— briankrebs (@briankrebs) July 20, 2015
Krebs, however, of the Krebs on Security website, won’t publish the portion of the 37 million usernames from the Ashley Madison hacked list that he received via email because he doesn’t want to be a part of the extortion attempt against Ashley Madison by the hackers.
The hackers, who call themselves the Impact Team, claimed that Ashley Madison’s promises of users’ data being deleted didn’t work, a charge that Ashley Madison denies.
AshleyMadison says its ‘paid delete’ service does in fact remove all account info, contrary to hacker claims. service was $19, but now free
— briankrebs (@briankrebs) July 20, 2015
Whether Ashley Madison’s users’ credit card info, sexual tastes, and real names actually appear online have yet to be verified by those continuing to search for the download links to the data dump of hacked Ashley Madison users. Thus far, sites like Pastebin promising the Ashley Madison hacked list of names contain shady promises of download links that lead to surveys and the like, and not the actual download link.
On Twitter, a search for “ Ashley Madison list ” and variations such as “Ashley Madison download link” and the like turns up users seeking the hacked list themselves. Searches for PDF files and text (txt) files offer similar results.
Already on Reddit, folks are writing about their spouses confessing to having Ashley Madison accounts as a preventative measure prior to the downloadable hacked list being released online en masse.
“So my husband, completely unprompted by me, calls me at work today to tell me he made an AM account. Apparently hackers are releasing user data, and he wanted to ‘give you a heads up so you don’t get the wrong idea.’ He says he made this account back when he was single. Some of his credit cards are older than our relationship so it will be hard for me to tell. I’m afraid he’s just covering his a**. My question is, would you believe this confession? Do guys really go on AM for singles dating? Where can I look at the data and are there dates in there (we’ve been exclusive 5 years). Is there a way to tell he is lying?”
Other Reddit users in threads like “ Help me prepare for my whole life to collapse ” are freaking out about their names appearing on the download hacked list eventually — and how their conservative families will react.
“Ashley Madison is hacked, my life is about to end. I’m sitting here sweating and shaking. Even if the site goes down like the hackers want, I’m sure they will release the data anyway. The hackers in it for s**** and giggles, they have no reason to keep a promise.”
Yet another Reddit user writes about his coworker freaking out about the Ashley Madison hacking , and uses a meme to describe that his marriage must’ve already been failing prior to the hack list’s release if he was cheating.
[Image via Ashley Madison]