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The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

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Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#281

Post by akshatpradhan »

peejaybee wrote: post #279
akshatpradhan wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If it's O.K. to hack into someone else's server and mass-out people for having profiles on a dating site because you suspect most of them might be "guilty" of the crime of "marital infidelity" --- and come on, To me, Thomas's opinion doesn't appear to be based on facts simply because Impact Team specifically said, "it decided to publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a servi…

I think there's enough moralizing dripping from Impact Team's preamble to the release to support Thomas' suggestion. "We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members ." "Chances are your man signed up on the world's biggest affair site, but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters." "Find yourself in here? It was ALM that failed you and lied to you. Prosecute them and c…

These are the quotes you're using to suggest that Impact Team's intent was targeted against the guilty marriage infidels? I don't know if I agree that those are reasonable enough quotes to ascertain that was their true intent.

This sounds like the real intent, "The Impact Team said it decided to publish the information in response to alleged lies ALM told its customers about a service that allows members to completely erase their profile information for a $19 fee."

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#282

Post by rquantz »

varjag wrote: post #203
mattzito wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or an SO who has an agreement with their spouse to let them quietly cheat has to now deal with strangers and friends alike "knowing" that the spouse sleeps around. Or person A is in a sexless but loving marriage with person B. They have kids, and don't want to get divorced because they love each other, but person B is just done with sex. Is it worse for person A to cheat on person B than it is for the two to get divo…

Look, I can make a bunch of similar sad puppy stories for the other side of coin as well. People holding it "for the kids" but who wouldn't really stay in case of infidelity. Unhappy people with orthodox religious beliefs who would alas divorce in case of adultery. People desperately trying to fix the relationship and improve themselves not realizing their partner is invested elsewhere and all their effort is wasted.…

The point is this leak exposes the "good" cheaters, the "bad" cheaters, and the... gray? cheaters alike. It also probably exposes a ton of people who never cheated, but in some dark moment went on the site to gawk or fantasize. Given there are only 9 million credit card transactions to 35 million emails, it makes me think they are probably the majority.

In any case, this leak makes no distinction between people who are doing wrong and people who aren't, and it hurts all of them. Since when was it ok to smear a million people who weren't doing anything wrong, just to blow up the lives of other people who were?

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#283

Post by Lawtonfogle »

dsacco wrote: post #4
tptacek wrote: post #2

The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable. People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee". But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had tr…

This is a great comment, Thomas. I had an argument with my girlfriend about this. No matter what reasoning I used, no matter what I said, she could not agree that it was wrong that Ashley Madison (A.M.) was hacked. Her position was that marital infidelity is such a pubishable offense that the participants on A.M. deserve to be publicly outed. In her view, it was not even up for debate. She felt so powerfully about in…

I think there are three questions here.

Is it legal.

Is it moral.

Should it be legal.

The last is quite complex and I won't get to it here because of the vast differences in moral theories as to what should and should not be legal.

As to the first, is it legal? Hacking isn't. The end.

But the middle question is interesting, and I dare say that many people have views such as my own, where morality is not dependent on legality but on morality. And I would also dare to say that most people do not have an issue exposing people who are using websites to commit very immoral actions. So the question becomes one of if the action of cheating is immoral enough to cross this threshold. That question is a really deep moral one and you probably have as much ability to change as most any deeply held moral view.

In short, most everyone agrees the right to privacy has limits based on extremely immoral actions. The difference is only in what counts as immoral enough, which is far less a distinction than 'right to privacy means hacking is wrong'.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#284

Post by [deleted] »

ZoFreX wrote: post #198
daemin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there ever any requirement that one be in a relationship to join the site? I'm sure more than a few would have joined, while pretending to be in one, and subsequently have started a relationship.

According to this poster: https://www.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/3ebzzj/i_may_get_ston... there is not a requirement to be in a relationship to use the site. And now he might die, because of the leak.

[deleted]

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#285

Post by sneak »

dsacco wrote: post #4
tptacek wrote: post #2

The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable. People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee". But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had tr…

This is a great comment, Thomas. I had an argument with my girlfriend about this. No matter what reasoning I used, no matter what I said, she could not agree that it was wrong that Ashley Madison (A.M.) was hacked. Her position was that marital infidelity is such a pubishable offense that the participants on A.M. deserve to be publicly outed. In her view, it was not even up for debate. She felt so powerfully about in…

Show her these:

https://twitter.com/iron_spike/status/633988534546796546

https://twitter.com/iron_spike/status/633988845483126785

https://twitter.com/iron_spike/status/633989126639849474

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#286

Post by [deleted] »

illyism wrote: post #196
bagels wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to know this too. I remember seeing a talk by Facebook on Youtube by their security team that they will download these datasets to see if Facebook users have used the same passwords so that they can protect accounts. It would be unfortunate if this was less than legal.

How is Facebook able to do this if the passwords are hashed in a different manner? Are they storing passwords in plain text?

[deleted]

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#287

Post by wtbob »

tptacek wrote: post #2

The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable. People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee". But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had tr…

I really, really hope that our society's not so far gone that 98% of folks on Twitter think that marital infidelity is unproblematic.

You're probably correct in your implication that folks are not posting and tweeting with glee because they care about infidelity, but because they want to humiliate and vilify.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#288

Post by thedufer »

akshatpradhan wrote: post #244
tptacek wrote: post #2

The response to this this on Twitter would be beyond fucked- up if it weren't so completely predictable. People are posting direct links to the dump, screenshots of lists of emails, and statistics for classes of domains. The general reaction to the availability of the dump is reasonably characterized as "glee". But no matter what you think about Ashley Madison --- and I think A.M. is so comically scummy that I had tr…

>The people doing this aren't victimizing Avid Life Media; they're re-victimizing the real victims of what is clearly an actual crime. If it's O.K. to hack into someone else's server and mass-out people for having profiles on a dating site because you suspect most of them might be "guilty" of the crime of "marital infidelity" --- and come on, 98% of the people talking about this on Twitter barely recognize that as et…

> If it's O.K. to hack into someone else's server and mass-out people for having profiles on a dating site because you suspect most of them might be "guilty" of the crime of "marital infidelity"

I think you've misunderstood. "you" are the people judging that the hacking was OK and outing the victims, not the people who did the hacking. I'm pretty sure Thomas is making no claim about the intent of the hackers themselves.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#289

Post by DarkTree »

RyanZAG wrote: post #243
nicolas_t wrote: post #217

What is worrying about this is that some people are in real physical danger because of this leak. It probably seemed like fun and "social justice" for the hackers but it's not. There are people who live in countries where adultery is punishable by death. Likewise for being gay. There's already one person from Saudi Arabia who expressed his concerns on Reddit but there's likely to be a lot of other people affected. An…

What is more worrying for me is that people in real physical danger would hand over that kind of information in the first place. There's very little stopping an employee at a company from selling this information to governments in these countries, or employees originating from these countries being forced to divulge the information. The real issue is that this information was freely given up in the first place. Hacks…

yeah, but this argument quickly becomes a slippery slope. If you start questioning whether or not they should have released their private information in the first place, then you can just as easily start questioning whether the countries should be physically punishing these people for that same information. So, what's the real issue? It depends where you draw the line.

Re: The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

#290

Post by Lawtonfogle »

tbrownaw wrote: post #252
antillean wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Either way, debate about polygamy vs. monogamy in this case-scenario is completely irrelevant. Someone was hacked, privacy was violated (it doesn't matter what privacy) and that is the end of that. There's no reason to attach another argument to the discussion because the hack was an outright violation in the first place." Is it that simple? Would the outright violation of a hack be the end of the story if we were…

Pictures don't hurt anyone (except sometimes in the libel/slander sense). But don't stolen credit cards get traded online? Or other impersonation / "identity theft" information? Maybe a marketplace for one of those would be a good example. . The trick is probably making sure that "something that we all agree is wrong" matches with things that actually harm people who didn't freely agree to it. Things like murder, coe…

Infidelity harms some, unless we aren't counting emotional harm.
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