Good news, cheaters: no cards stolen from Ashley Madison
Your marriage may be over, but at least your financial information is secure!
Things are looking pretty bleak right now for people who are into cheating on their significant other, a.k.a. people who have an Ashley Madison account, after the information that was stolen from the site in July was leaked onto the Internet on Tuesday.
Uh oh. Looks like divorce attorneys are going to have their hands full for a while!
There is one bit of good news to come out of all of this, though. Well, at least a tiny silver lining anyway; in a short update on Wednesday, Avid Media, Ashley Madison's parent company revealed that no credit card.
"No current or past members’ full credit card numbers were stolen from Avid Life Media. Any statements to the contrary are false. Avid Life Media has never stored members’ full credit card numbers," it wrote.
So while your marriage may be over, at least your financial information is secure. So at least that's something!
Ashley Madison, a company whose slogan is "Life is short. Have an affair," is like an online dating service, but it caters toward married people who want to step out. The site is extremely popular, with more than 124 million visits per month. It is also ranked No. 18 among Adult sites.
Avid first admitted that it was hacked in July, with the company saying that it had "immediately launched a thorough investigation utilizing leading forensics experts and other security professionals to determine the origin, nature, and scope of this incident."
While taking steps to take down information that was published online, the company could obviously not take back the information that was already stolen. And so, as was inevitable, the company revealed that that info has now been leaked online in a massive dump.
"We are actively monitoring and investigating this situation to determine the validity of any information posted online and will continue to devote significant resources to this effort," it said in its blog post. "Furthermore, we will continue to put forth substantial efforts into removing any information unlawfully released to the public, as well as continuing to operate our business."
A spokesperson for Avid Life Media would not reveal to VatorNews what information actually was stolen in the breach, nor would it reveal how many members were affected, but the number is said to be somewhere around 37 million. (As others have said before, wow that's a lot of people cheating!)
The lack of leaked credit card data is not only good for Ashley Madison members, but for Avid Life as well. I mean, just look at what happened to Target after its leak that was said to have affected 70 million customers who shopped there, as well as up to potentially 40 million credit cards.
Target was sued by the major credit card companies, including MasterCard and Visa for allowing the leak to occur. It originally agreed to pay MasterCard $19 million, though that deal eventually fell apart when it was determined that that was not enough. On Tuesday the company agreed to pay Visa $67 million back to its members.
(Image source: ashleymadison.com)
