Online cheating site Ashley Madison hack outed the unfaithful

The group of hackers that hacked the world’s biggest online cheating site Ashley Madison posted data of 37 million members to the web, sparking a big controversy. The infidelity site, which sets up affairs between married men and women under the slogan of ‘Life is short. Have an affair,’ was hacked by a group of hackers called ‘Impact Team’ in the early of July. The hackers threatened to leak the data of its subscribers unless the adultery website closes itself. The hackers put their words into action and dumped the information online.

What surprised Americans was that 15,000 members were public officials working for government organizations and the military. Among many cities in the States, Washington has the biggest membership of the site, indicating that it is a ‘city of infidelity.’ In an article of the New York Times, writer Jennifer Weiner said, “Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that D.C. is full of cheaters, but why, oh why, did it have to be full of stupid cheaters, cheaters too lazy and incurious to go to Gmail.com before they cheated?”

The leak revealed the scam that Ashley Madison has been used. Most of female profiles on the adultery site were fake. Many guys search for profiles on the site expecting a one night stand. However, the number of female members was too small to meet the demand and Ashley Madison created faked female profiles. It also was disclosed that the cheating site did not remove personal information of a subscriber who quit the membership, even after receiving additional fees. The Canada-based online cheating site is expected to go out of business.

In the U.S., there is a heated controversy over an economic effect generated by Ashley Madison hack. While at least 200,000 couples are expected to get divorced, some analysts say that productivity will drop due to growing number of domestic disputes and divorces, which in turn causes a negative impact to the U.S. economy. It gives a clue on how big ripple effect would be brought by the leak of information of users to the infidelity site. Ashley Madison started operation in Korea last year and withdrew its operation when faced with strong regulations by the Korea Communications Commission. This year, the online cheating sites resumed its operation as the law against adultery was abolished. The number of Korean subscribers is estimated at around 200,000. The price for visiting an adultery site would be huge. “Am I trembling?

shchung@donga.com