Ashley Madison... hacked

masterandmargarita said:

I don't believe that 37 million people are up to no good, but it makes no difference to me. I will still defend their, and your, right to privacy.

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Well, engaging in adultery is "being up to no good" pretty much by definition*. There might be variously comprehensible reasons and circumstances behind it, but (unless you're in an "open marriage") you're ultimately choosing to do something that you know is violating a trust and a contract. There is no way people do that without knowing they are "up to no good;" that knowledge is precisely what the site's image was built to cater to. It's just that their security promises turned out to be hollow.

* That said, who knows what percentage of the site's users actually went through with anything. It could be substantially lower than the total membership but that might not spare some people from being ruined by disclosure anyway. So I guess I can also see your point.

Bramblethorn said:

I'm always a little wary about that sort of stuff because... yeah, sex trafficking is a real and horrible thing*, but "trafficking" is also invoked as an excuse to justify cracking down on consensual sex work.

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Agree completely, very much so. That's why I'm curious to see if there will be any actual verification of whether the website was involved with anything that resembled actual "trafficking" or if that's just over-the-top rhetoric.

I do not harbor even the slightest judgement of these millions of people whose stories and situations I don't know. I care about my privacy. I care about your privacy. I care about their privacy. I apologize if that is controversial. I mistakenly assumed privacy would be a popular value on a forum such as this one. I can't teach empathy, but perhaps you (the ones that are enjoying the hack) can teach me hate? Would it make it easier to hate the dirty cheaters if I was really insecure?

Hatred has nothing to do with it. Schadenfreude? Oh, yes. It's the same sort of thing that makes the Darwin Awards so entertaining. The unending foolishness of the species is great comedy.

CyranoJ said:

Well, engaging in adultery is "being up to no good" pretty much by definition*. There might be variously comprehensible reasons and circumstances behind it, but (unless you're in an "open marriage") you're ultimately choosing to do something that you know is violating a trust and a contract. There is no way people do that without knowing they are "up to no good;" that knowledge is precisely what the site's image was built to cater to. It's just that their security promises turned out to be hollow.

* That said, who knows what percentage of the site's users actually went through with anything. It could be substantially lower than the total membership but that might not spare some people from being ruined by disclosure anyway. So I guess I can also see your point.



Agree completely, very much so. That's why I'm curious to see if there will be any actual verification of whether the website was involved with anything that resembled actual "trafficking" or if that's just over-the-top rhetoric.

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So many good examples in here that shatter the notion that they are all evil cheaters that have it coming. I'm especially sympathetic to the "open marriage" category. Ha, at this point I'm sounding like I'm one of the victims, but I've never tried out that website. I've been curious about it, but some hackers (and some of you) came along and decided that it is an evil website and I (and my wife) shouldn't be allowed to explore it without dire consequence. Thanks for looking out!

masterandmargarita said:

I do not harbor even the slightest judgement of these millions of people whose stories and situations I don't know. I care about my privacy. I care about your privacy. I care about their privacy. I apologize if that is controversial. I mistakenly assumed privacy would be a popular value on a forum such as this one. I can't teach empathy, but perhaps you (the ones that are enjoying the hack) can teach me hate? Would it make it easier to hate the dirty cheaters if I was really insecure?

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Oh, come on, you're going way over the top in telling others here what they think. And being far too "noble" about the right to privacy. Unless you were forced into a shotgun marriage, you voluntarily gave up some aspects of your right to total personal privacy when you committed to a spouse (and any children that are produced). If you don't want to give that up, don't make a marriage commitment.

Surprise, but it isn't all about the "me." If you are going to pull your weight in a society you chose to live in and pull your benefits from it, it's not going to be all about "me."

sr71plt said:

Oh, come on, you're going way over the top in telling others here what they think. And being far too "noble" about the right to privacy. Unless you were forced into a shotgun marriage, you voluntarily gave up some aspects of your right to total personal privacy when you committed to a spouse (and any children that are produced). If you don't want to give that up, don't make a marriage commitment.

Surprise, but it isn't all about the "me." If you are going to pull your weight in a society you chose to live in and pull your benefits from it, it's not going to be all about "me."

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I don't agree on the marriage points, but on going over the top and being too noble -most definitely. I'm sure to get (rightful) heat for that. Hey, at least you warned me!

masterandmargarita said:

So many good examples in here that shatter the notion that they are all evil cheaters that have it coming. I'm especially sympathetic to the "open marriage" category.

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Um, no genuinely "open marriage" would have needed to use Ashley Madison.

If the hackers spill a bunch of revenge porn on the Net, they obviously deserve to get arrested. But expecting that to translate into sympathy for cheating is unrealistic. Sympathy for people whose only sin was exploring the website? Sure. But "you're an immoral scold if you think adultery is bad" is never going to fly. Obviously it is bad idea to fail at distinguishing between fantasy and reality; fantasizing about adultery and actually doing it are vastly different things, just they are as with noncon or incest.

masterandmargarita said:

I don't agree on the marriage points, but on going over the top and being too noble -most definitely. I'm sure to get (rightful) heat for that. Hey, at least you warned me!

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I do agree with you that a commitment can be defined as more freeing in an open marriage. And I do believe open marriages are possible (I had one until we both decided we wanted more of a commitment from each other than that).

I probably don't believe as much as you do that there are all that many "agreed by both" open marriages in existence--and surely nothing like the number of folks who joined this Web site. And an open marriage acknowledged between spouses isn't the same as one acknowledged and accepted by anyone who might obtain the information that someone they knew joined this site. It also has nothing to do with credit card numbers and other personal information hacked.

My guess is that most of those who joined were just cruising the Internet for titillation. And now they will have gotten an education on risk taking and naive trusting on the Internet. And it's really no one's fault but their own. We're seeing examples of Internet security failures all around us. It's hard to miss.

A bit of news I got - HERE.

I have to confess that I needed a bit of explanation about A.M.

AM should've stuck a huuuuuge banner -- "JOIN AT YOUR OWN RISK"

Seriously, how stupid can people actually be to give out personal info online for stuffs like these? Nothing is safe online. Especially on such websites.

I don't care what happens to such people. They did it knowingly, they better clean it up themselves as best as they can. Anyone pleading sympathy from me will get a swift kick in their asses.

sr71plt said:

I'd say that if they wanted to make a real impact they would have refrained from announcing the hack and started to blackmail the ones coming up with real good credit matched with real juicy profiles and large, religious or high-political-profile families.

I expect to see some Lit. stories along these lines.

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Meh. I can easily imagine someone sickened by changes in current society, seeing a slow but steady devolution in the concept of marriage all around him, deciding there's little he can do about it.. but wait, there's this hideous AM site.... Such a person presumably wouldn't do blackmail; you don't solve one moral issue by creating another.

I doubt that happened here, though.

Aside from the LW stories that I'll never read, the one good story I could see coming from this is a tale about a moral crusader who deliberately gets hired by AM for the express purpose of stealing the data and shutting the site down/destroying the users' lives. Again, I doubt that happened here, but someone able to write about ethical dilemmas and temptation better than I can could have a field day with it.

The nightmare scenario is that the list of AM users is going to be cross-referenced with the list of people with security clearances that the Chinese recently stole. Given 37 million on the AM list and 21 million on the clearance list, odds of some overlap are high. And bingo - the overlap is a list of people who are clearly stupid, morally challenged, are trivial to blackmail and know classified information.

"Yes, Mr. Jones. You really have only two choices. Defy my Chinese masters - and your sham of a marriage is ruined and you'll never work in your field again. Or.. tell us everything about Project DragonWheel... and we'll make you immensely rich, and set you up with what we know you can't resist - three beautiful young asian love slaves..."

The story writes itself. I'd claim dibs but I don't do failed marriage stories.

I can imagine the managers of secrets in the US government are banging their heads on tables and sobbing right about now.

HandsInTheDark said:

Meh. I can easily imagine someone sickened by changes in current society, seeing a slow but steady devolution in the concept of marriage all around him, deciding there's little he can do about it.. but wait, there's this hideous AM site.... Such a person presumably wouldn't do blackmail; you don't solve one moral issue by creating another.

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I wasn't even hinting that it would be blackmail for moral reasons. It would be blackmail for money and for other forms of control over the blackmailed.

I think the fictional treatment of the AM story deserves a special contest of it's own. This is a Loving Wives wet dream come true. If anyone goes ahead with a story, keep us posted! Mine would be about a husband and wife that are cheating with the same woman. Yeah, it's been done before, but this time the way that they find out is based on a true story Guess how it ends...

Handley_Page said:

A bit of news I got - HERE.

I have to confess that I needed a bit of explanation about A.M.

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Great article, especially this point: "What type of business will adversaries deem 'objectionable' next, and demand its closure, in addition to holding its customers hostage with their stolen, personal information."

I do not harbor even the slightest judgement of these millions of people whose stories and situations I don't know. I care about my privacy. I care about your privacy. I care about their privacy. I apologize if that is controversial. I mistakenly assumed privacy would be a popular value on a forum such as this one. I can't teach empathy, but perhaps you (the ones that are enjoying the hack) can teach me hate? Would it make it easier to hate the dirty cheaters if I was really insecure?

Very well said. Not only are we collectively on a site that is sex based, so is AM. And one thing lit has taught me is that there are a lot of sexually frustrated men and women out there that love their spouses. I would imagine that there are mental and emotional connections being made on the AM site in addition to the physical ones. Who gets to judge or decide which of those lines constitutes cheating or not? It's irrelevant really. The minute we can put our judgements aside and look at the bigger picture of our privacy being jeopardized, this will continue to happen. Already, we as a society are accepting of these hacks and have come to expect them. That in itself is scary.

daddysbaby150 said:

Very well said. Not only are we collectively on a site that is sex based, so is AM.

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Actually, AM was explicitly betrayal-based, which is not really the same thing as being sex-based.

But look, I'm not saying you're wrong in any significant sense bearing on the case. Should punishing the hackers and preventing breaches of privacy be a far higher priority than judging the site users? Of bloody course. Does our society have way too casual and apathetic an attitude to privacy? Absolutely. Do plenty of us have a stake in that? Certainly.

Past that point, though, are you likely to persuade a lot of people that cheating is an excusable thing? Far tougher row to hoe, I don't think it's happening and there are lots of reasons for that which are not easy to dismiss.

It's been noted several times on this thread already. AM is nothing like Literotica. You pay on AM. You declare who you are. Anyone who expects their privacy to be protected on a cheating site when other sites including personal data are being hacked left and right is just too dumb to feel sorry for. There's an obvious element of moral judgment there for anyone who wants to take that path, but even without that, there's still a "what in the hell were you expecting?" element too.

And acting like the right to privacy is some sort of god-given moral right is an amusing position to take in this. Unless you were zoned out and had a gun to your back when you signed a marriage certificate, you should have known that it no longer was all about you and your total privacy. Sounds so totally self-centered and sleazy. I don't see it so much as a privacy issue in this instance as a totally selfish issue. I don't give props for that and it doesn't have anything to do with being puritanical.

Admittedly kind of amusing, or maybe just bemusing: a fifth of the population of Ottawa ("the city fun forgot") were Ashley Madison users.

Frankly, I'm not surprised. Politician=dirtbag so terribly often.

Men and women have been cheating on each other for all eternity. The Internet allowed it to be monetized. If you turn the site off, the cheaters will still cheat.

I am more concerned with where the moral vigilantes will strike next. History should make us wary of groups who answer to no one and claim to have right on their side.

Let’s just get off the morality police kick. As commentators have said, the most likely basic reason for this hacking is the charge that the site isn’t protecting the information or deleting it when it has charged users to do that. Those who went for this need to take responsibility for their own gullibility that data in cyberspace can be/is protected. And those users who see nothing wrong with using the service shouldn't have any kick about being exposed using it other than the theft and possible charges from the compromised credit data.

This from the OP article:

In addition to charging customers who use the site, Ashley Madison also made money by charging users $20 to fully delete their information from the site. But in a statement provided to Krebs, the hackers say this service didn't work. "Full Delete netted ALM $1.7mm in revenue in 2014. It’s also a complete lie," the hacking group wrote. "Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed."

And you can just drop the scare tactics that what's happening at AM can have the same effect here on Literotica. They are two entirely different animals both in content and in personal identification required.

masterandmargarita said:

This article gets it right, in my opinion: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...e-internet-turn-into-the-monogamy-police.html

The mob mentality about "cheaters" would be funny if it wasn't so puritan, so medieval. Before condemning the alleged cheaters, consider the possibility of a similar hack on this very forum. Some people are up to no good here, some are squeaky clean. How would you like to be lumped together?

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I think many people would be embarrassed, but with the mainstream success of 50 shades most people on here would be okay being out-ed. Cheating on a partner is different. Are you saying there are people breaking laws on litt, using the forum to sell drugs and other criminality?

I'm really quite surprised at all the quick to judge viewpoints on "cheating" expressed by erotic writers here. You never know. You don't have a clue what is going on in two people's marriage, or minds. Sometimes, sure, you've got a lyin' cheatin' scumbag who is betraying someone else's trust. But that's hardly a given. So many marriages are such empty, fake crapola, such lip service, its ridiculous that they DON'T step out. So many reasons and motives why people do what they do. I don't judge until I know more.

Pretty much in order to have an affair, you're betraying a trust by definition; I can't think of many marriages where fidelity isn't supposed to be a core and explicit part of the deal. Now, whether the person's trust you're betraying is an abusive asshole who arguably deserves it or a largely indifferent virtual-stranger in a sham marriage or an innocent and loving dupe who you're going to Hell for stepping out on is of course a whole other question.

That puts it well I think

CyranoJ said:

Pretty much in order to have an affair, you're betraying a trust by definition; I can't think of many marriages where fidelity isn't supposed to be a core and explicit part of the deal. Now, whether the person's trust you're betraying is an abusive asshole who arguably deserves it or a largely indifferent virtual-stranger in a sham marriage or an innocent and loving dupe who you're going to Hell for stepping out on is of course a whole other question.

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