Friday, April 22, 2016

Ashley Madison speaks of morals and values


Ashley Madison is a website operated by Avid Life Media of Toronto, its slogan "Life is short. Have an affair." The site purports to be "the leading dating service for discreet encounters" of the infidelity kind. The braggadocio speaks of a "secure site." Indeed, the company flaunts a "trusted security award."

Such websites cater to men who lack self-confidence and imagination, creatures who neither understand nor accept their limitations and whose naïveté leads them to believe the fairy tale of website security.

Hackers recently successfully cyber-attacked Ashley Madison. They demanded the site be "immediately and permanently" shut down along with a sister site that operated in "prostitution/human trafficking." Avid Life did not oblige. The hackers released profiles of the site's clients, names, addresses, credit card information and painfully more.

Righteous double-talk added a touch of dark humour to the drama. In a statement, the company pleaded for an end to this "unprecedented crime." It asked the hacking community "to use their moral judgement and their values to help us."

Yes, an infidelity website with a false promise of security speaks of morals and values. Hacked emails showed that Avid Life itself had hacked into a competitor's website in 2012, thereby having earlier committed this "unprecedented crime."

And one dares speak of morals and values.

April 22, 2016 up-date. In the class-action lawsuit against Avid Life Media for security breach, a Missouri judge refused a request for anonymity by that the 42 plaintiffs representing users of the website. They must identify themselves for the action to proceed. We await the next step in this tawdry affair.

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