5 worrying consequences of the Ashley Madison hack

The Ashley Madison dating website hack is still big news in the media. The big news that hackers compromised the online dating website and dumped huge amounts of user data onto the public World Wide Web has inevitably sparked a large number of spin-off stories.

For one, Ashley Madison is being sued by a multi-million dollar class action suit in Canada (to which lawyers will be the only real winners.) That is tied in with the revelation that user data that was supposedly permanently deleted actually wasn’t, apparently. Oops.

There are also the unfounded claims that any number of celebrities have been implicated in the hack. Also the news that a $500K bounty has been put on the heads of the hackers for information leading to their arrests. And there is the threat of religious persecution for those living in countries where adultery and homosexuality comes with punitive action that can include the death penalty.

Along with the spin-off stories come the consequences. Some inevitable. Some unfortunate. Here are five worrying consequences that have come as a result of one of the Internet’s largest hacking incidents. It makes for some pretty bleak reading.

Social media hate campaigns

Social media, or indeed the Internet in general, can be a very cruel place. As we have mentioned numerous times on this site, the apparent [yet lessening] anonymity provided by the Internet tends to lower ones inhibitions, and the callous death threats have come pouring in from all corners of cyberspace.

Such threats implore those caught out in the hacking scandal to kill themselves, yet the vast majority of such threats have – unsurprisingly – been posted anonymously.

The threats come coupled with smear campaigns – driven by social media – riddled with violent and vile rhetoric, including assertions that those who have had their details exposed “deserve to die” or should be killed.

And yes, many of these hate campaigns have been directed as specific people, despite being well publicised that anyone can sign up under any identity, meaning if your name or email surfaces in the leaked information, this doesn’t necessarily mean you were a member of the website.

[Worth reading: Why social media hate campaigns are never worth it.]

Suicide?

Perhaps the most worrying consequence is itself the consequence of the above point. At the time of writing, unconfirmed reports are surfacing that claim that people may have already taken their lives as a result of the hack.

Many mainstream media outlets, including the BBC, are reporting the story that police are investigating two apparent suicides that may have been either a direct or indirect result of the leak.

At the time the details are neither confirmed or concrete, and we’ll keep this part updated as the story develops.

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Scams, scams and more scams.

It is no secret that online scammers just love breaking news stories that capture the attention of the entire world, which this has certainly done.

This is because scammers can use information about that story to lure victims to traps. Like a spider spinning its web.

In regards to the Ashley Madison story, scammers have been busy setting up booby-trapped websites purporting to offer the leaked information. These websites can appear in search engine results or their links can spread through social media or email.

But these sites are actually using a variety of tricks to lure visitors into downloading harmful malware.

The original information leaked online wasn’t easily legible to the average Internet user, and required specialist tools to put together. Whilst it is indeed likely that by now many technically-minded individuals have compiled databases that are more user-friendly, there are certainly more malware traps lurking on the Internet than legitimate links.

Online Extortion

There are scams, and then there is outright extortion.

Police have confirmed that many users who have had their details exposed by the leaks have been contacted by Internet criminals threatening to release their information to potentially unaware family members, significant others, even employers, unless the victim doesn’t cough up money (naturally payable via BitCoin.)

This has also been combined with untargeted scams where criminals send out emails en mass to millions of email addresses in the hope that their emails happen to land in the inbox of someone who was a member of the Ashley Madison website.

Good news for lawyers

Perhaps the most inevitable outcome from all of this is that it is all great news for lawyers.

Whether its divorce cases or the lucky ones that are part of the class action suit in Canada (or class action suits to come) there is plenty of money to be made for those with law degrees.

Given these consequences, it is fair to say that the entire incident hasn’t exactly demonstrated the good side of human nature, and the depravity certainly isn’t limited to those who were signed up to the Ashley Madison website.

Hopefully the good we know that is in many of us will shine through and at least give this story an eventual silver lining. We’re just not sure how yet.