Hackers have leaked a database of private information scraped from tens of millions of profiles, including user email addresses, phone numbers, payment details and checked-off sexual desires.
For those of us left unexposed, the hacking has given us more questions than answers. Questions like: Is my husband on here? What about my ex-boyfriend? And my dad? Should I enter all of their email addresses into this website that tells you if it鈥檚 associated with an Ashley Madison account, just in case?
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Those dilemmas, and more, answered:
Why did the hackers do this?
Ashley Madison believes that Impact Team, the anonymous hacking collective that鈥檚 claimed responsibility for the leak, is an that wants to impose its 鈥減ersonal notion of virtue on all of society鈥�. Impact Team says it targeted Ashley Madison because the site to delete their full message history and on customers after they leave.
Still, it鈥檚 not all about privacy; there seems to be a chivalrous bent to Impact Team鈥檚 crusade. Ashley Madison鈥檚 parent company, , also owns taboo dating sites (鈥淐onnecting young, beautiful women with interesting men鈥�) and (鈥淢eet Divorcees, Single Moms, and Sexy Singles looking for a young Stud!鈥�).
The hackers included Established Men users in the Ashley Madison leak, but they . On Twitter, BuzzFeed鈥檚 Katie Notopolous noted that to predominantly target men. This is a smart move: After of female celebrity nude photos sparked a feminist backlash, a hacker who hopes to discredit and embarrass his target may find that shaming women causes his plan to backfire. So while women constitute a healthy minority of Ashley Madison users, Impact Team has made an effort to exclude them from the public shaming ritual.
In fact, in a , the hackers suggested that women who turn up in the database are probably just one of the site鈥檚 many 鈥渇ake female profiles鈥�. It didn鈥檛 let the men off so easily: 鈥淐hances are your husband signed up for the world鈥檚 biggest affair site, but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters.鈥�
Does that distinction matter?
What constitutes cheating varies from couple to couple, but I think most Americans would agree that entering an email address into a website and making genital contact with another human being are different things.
How do Ashley Madison users feel about the leak?
I created a profile, uploaded a photo, used Ashley Madison鈥檚 photo-editing software to place a fun mask graphic over my face, and tooled around the site looking for the cheaters to share their feelings. I admitted to being a journalist on assignment in my profile, and nobody agreed to talk to me, but one of them did send me a photograph of his penis. I can confidently report that many users鈥� activities have not been affected by the leak.
How should I feel about the leak?
. If these hacks tell us anything, it鈥檚 that a lot of people would hate for strangers to rifle through their private emails, yet can鈥檛 help but rifle when someone else鈥檚 digital artefacts are exposed. (Especially if that someone is George W. Bush and the artefacts are his amateur dog portraits.) But remember that hackers have idiosyncratic motivations that don鈥檛 necessarily track with broader cultural movements and aren鈥檛 easily conveyed by the targets they choose to attack.
Consider our varied responses to the Sony hack: The reports of Hollywood racism and greed uncovered in the Sony emails felt important; the airing of Channing Tatum鈥檚 over the success of 22 Jump Street seemed harmless enough; and the publication of Amy Pascal鈥檚 intimate Amazon orders was denounced as a sexist violation. A hack does not have its own moral compass. That鈥檚 our job.
So is anyone famous in the database?
Amoral and bored corners of the internet have been searching the data dump in pursuit of any sensational name 鈥� Hollywood actor, congressman, religious figure, PTA leader 鈥� but so far, no fancy people have been widely identified. The many prominent email accounts 鈥� like barack.obama@whitehouse.gov 鈥� that have surfaced since the leak were likely submitted by other users hoping to conceal their own identities, because Ashley Madison .
Perhaps famous people are unlikely to use a janky website populated largely by less-famous dudes to find sex partners. .
Should I search for my dad鈥檚 email?
No. All possible outcomes of that decision are gross and sad.
Should I search for my spouse鈥檚 email?
Let鈥檚 not. If you suspect your spouse has been untrue, you鈥檇 probably find more reliable evidence by scrolling through their texts than searching this database. Not all Ashley Madison users have cheated on their spouses, and not all cheaters are on Ashley Madison.
Should I search for my ex鈥檚 email?
No! BuzzFeed鈥檚 Ellen Cushing , got a match, and then got sucked into an extended text conversation about their relationship. They broke up three years ago!
So who is on this website?
Broadly speaking: curious people, bored people, robot scammers who are not actually people, and cheaters. But, while infidelity is pretty common in the American marriage 鈥� one Indiana University study that around 20 per cent of married Americans admitted to cheating on their spouses 鈥� Ashley Madison is hardly a representative sample of America鈥檚 unfaithful. Men and women , but Ashley Madison is a sausage fest. Also, the service explicitly targets people who have fairly .
When I Ashley Madison owner Noel Biderman in 2009, he was eager to expand into new markets, and he reasoned that while chauvinists in Brazil could be easily encouraged to sign on, French libertines were unlikely to bite. The site stands to profit from a host of conservative social trends: Closeted gay men who are afraid to come out, religious invectives against divorce, and couples before sexually experimenting with other partners.
I searched for your email and found a match
I did it for this story!
Are we all going to stop telling the internet our terrible secrets now?
thinks we might. The hack 鈥渇eels like a momentous event鈥� millions of lives may be about to change profoundly,鈥� he writes. Not just the cheaters鈥�, but our own: The hack 鈥渉as the potential to alter anyone鈥檚 relationship with the devices and apps and services they use every day鈥�. The fallout 鈥渃ould haunt every email, private message, text and transaction across an internet where privacy has been taken for granted鈥�.
I鈥檓 betting it won鈥檛, though. No amount of shame piled onto strangers will make us stop complaining about our co-workers on Gchat, or stop texting photos of our naked bodies to our partners, or stop getting sucked into a taboo online world.
These hacks may make us more and more aware of the ways our technology can betray us, but we鈥檙e human. We鈥檙e perfectly capable of betraying ourselves.
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