You may have heard of the recent internet hack of Ashley Madison, the website for cheating spouses. The hack appears to have led to the data of 30 million users being leaked online – inlcuding names, addresses, and partial credit card details. Here’s what their parent company, Avid Life Media, has to say.
We were recently made aware of an attempt by an unauthorized party to gain access to our systems. We apologise for this unprovoked and criminal intrusion into our customers’ information. We have always had the confidentiality of our customers’ information foremost in our minds, and have had stringent security measures in place, including working with leading IT vendors from around the world.
At this time, we have been able to secure our sites, and close the unauthorized access points. We are working with law enforcement agencies, which are investigating this criminal act. Any and all parties responsible for this act of cyber–terrorism will be held responsible. Using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), our team has now successfully removed the posts related to this incident as well as all Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about our users published online.
Contrary to current media reports, and based on accusations posted online by a cyber criminal, the “paid-delete” option offered by AshleyMadison.com does in fact remove all information related to a member’s profile and communications activity. The process involves a hard-delete of a requesting user’s profile, including the removal of posted pictures and all messages sent to other system users’ email boxes. This option was developed due to specific member requests for just such a service, and designed based on their feedback.
As our customers’ privacy is of the utmost concern to us, we are now offering our full-delete option free to any member, in light of today’s news.
