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Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

troyhunt.com

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Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#91

Post by hyperpape »

bradleyankrom wrote: post #56
burnburnburn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The immoral business behavior seems to be the hackers' motivation, based on what they've written. They sought out to destroy the business. I'm guessing they'll succeed in that.

I know the sample Troy showed may not be representative of the whole, but I think there are a lot of users, outside of tech, that aren't aware of the breach. There is a comment somewhere -- maybe it's from the article, I can't remember -- expressing surprise that the AM home page doesn't acknowledge the breach at all. I would imagine that they are still receiving signups from folks who aren't following this story.

They are still receiving signups: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/63482830938637107...

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#92

Post by gnufied »

transfire wrote: post #36

Anyone notice that the media is eating this up? But let me tell you the media also lent its support to this website. I was watching CNBC a few years ago and they had the CEO of Ashley Madison on and had a great time talking about their "brilliant business model", and how great the site was. No one seemed morally repulsed then. Well I was curious just from a business perspective (and curious how many people would actu…

To be completely fair, internet industry as a whole is hell bent on keeping users in, rather than letting them delete their accounts. The other day, I was trying to delete my Steam account and I couldn't find a way to do that and Valve happens to be one of the most respectable company on earth.

I don't know what will change attitude of our industry. I guess lot of us are still stuck with mindset of real-world brick/mortor shops - if you don't want do anything with Shop X just don't go there! Sadly this does not really work for loads of internet services. Perhaps we need a legislation like Right to Forget (I am not endorsing EU law fwiw).

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#94

Post by 811639047892938 »

One thing I'd really like to know, and obviously nobody will tell: There are surely STILL people signing up and paying right now, who don't know about the hack, or whatever. I'd just love to know whether their signups (not counting people who have recurring payments and haven't thought to cancel) have gone down 90%, 95%, or who knows, it could be one of those crazy things where they've only lost 50% of new users or something (although I'd doubt it).

A recruiter working with AM contacted me 3 days before the hack was first announced and was really pushing me to work there, and I kind of want to just be a jerk and email them today saying "Hey I'm interested, are they still hiring?"

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#95

Post by VLM »

njharman wrote: post #66
jalanco wrote: post #6

Reading this made me think about the hard problem of "removing" yourself from the internet. I don't think it is possible. But I do think there might be an opportunity for a service that creates so much conflicting and false information about a person that it is not possible to know the truth about them: false addresses, phone numbers, credit histories, you name it. Just a thought.

Having lots of false information is (very) worse in many cases. People don't know it's false and will assume it is true and about you. So, for instance if this "False info Service" created an account (probably several) on AM, you'd probably be unhappy now. Or posts on some nasty 4Chan that prospective employers find. Or puts up false past address that happened to be the real address of sex offender and now your name…

You're assuming the false data has to be some kind of "white noise composite" of all internet content, including the bad stuff.

I would think it would be trivial to collect relatively innocent concepts and flood the net with them. Such that the nym "VLM" would now and forever be associated solely with thousands, perhaps millions, of facebook posts of cute kitten memes. That would be easy to filter, but its not like world wide civilization has any shortage of blandly familiar inoffensive fluff to use as a source.

Meanwhile build a worldwide black list, so no religious commentary at all, no alcohol / tobacco / other drug use, no political commentary.

It seems like a reasonable startup opportunity.

Meanwhile working the other side, another startup can work on filtering bland stuff from social media. Maybe with a secret back channel to the flooders. I would imagine, unfortunately, if you crossed off all the inane posts from most social media users, the end result would be many totally legit people having no record at all!

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#96

Post by notahacker »

leephillips wrote: post #61
formichunter wrote: post #2

In northern virginia, fairfaxunderground website, was nice enough to parse only information pertinent to this area. Now, everybody and their friends have searched through it looking for people they know. My wife actually found a good friend's dad listed twice...and he's still married. So, now all those facebook connection have this awkward knowledge and no one will tell the friend.

The problem, if there is one, is not the data breach. The problem is this voyeuristic curiosity. It never even occurred to me to look at this data. How low would my self respect have to sink before I found it a good use of my time to go strolling in a sewer?

Not to mention the likelihood that similar "voyeuristic curiosity", as opposed to an active desire to start an affair, was behind many of the signups' decision to register for the site in the first place. Their decision to stroll in the sewer didn't help them out too much, and similarly I can't imagine someone sharing the information that they've been through the list of names winning them too many friends, regardless of what they choose to find or not disclose.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#97

Post by rue »

fab13n wrote: post #71
rue wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Serial polygamy’ means a sequence of multiple simultaneous relationships. You mean serial monogamy.

I meant it as an electrical engineering metaphor, where you can string devices in parallel, or in serial one after the other, but where with a few adaptations both can lead to the same practical result. Besides, my whole point is that this behavior constitutes a variant of polygamy, not a variant of monogamy, so I stand by that term. That there's a "serial monogamy" idiom describing it (I just discovered it thanks to…

I don’t know, I think it’s less useful to read ‘lifelong’ into the word monogamy. It simply describes the number of simultaneous relationships—whether it lasts for a week or forever is another dimension.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#98

Post by cousin_it »

acqq wrote: post #82
cousin_it wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something can be both accurate and mean at the same time. Example: "hey, you're fat". I feel that "hey, you're bitter and need to get some friends" is about the same ballpark. Maybe other people have a thicker skin, though.

So how would you write that message? The big part of the statement was skipped by you: > I think you should make more friends that are women so that you can talk to them about the way they view relationships. Which definitely doesn't sound near to "hey, you're fat." And that "fat-like" part is also in fact different: "It sounds like you're pretty bitter (...)" -- note that it discusses the impression of the written c…

> So how would you write that message?

I guess I wouldn't write it. When I read transfire's and roymurdock's comments, it's not obvious to me whose opinion is more informed, or if the question even makes sense. Their experiences with women could just be different, and one ended up more cynical than the other.

> Btw I don't think it's OK to remove your claim that roymurdock's response was "mean"

Yeah. Sorry. I was just trying to make my own comment less mean :-/

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#99

Post by marrs »

njharman wrote: post #66
jalanco wrote: post #6

Reading this made me think about the hard problem of "removing" yourself from the internet. I don't think it is possible. But I do think there might be an opportunity for a service that creates so much conflicting and false information about a person that it is not possible to know the truth about them: false addresses, phone numbers, credit histories, you name it. Just a thought.

Having lots of false information is (very) worse in many cases. People don't know it's false and will assume it is true and about you. So, for instance if this "False info Service" created an account (probably several) on AM, you'd probably be unhappy now. Or posts on some nasty 4Chan that prospective employers find. Or puts up false past address that happened to be the real address of sex offender and now your name…

Facing divorce because your name appeared on a list is more than just embarrassing.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#100

Post by acqq »

cousin_it wrote: post #98
acqq wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how would you write that message? The big part of the statement was skipped by you: > I think you should make more friends that are women so that you can talk to them about the way they view relationships. Which definitely doesn't sound near to "hey, you're fat." And that "fat-like" part is also in fact different: "It sounds like you're pretty bitter (...)" -- note that it discusses the impression of the written c…

> So how would you write that message? I guess I wouldn't write it. When I read transfire's and roymurdock's comments, it's not obvious to me whose opinion is more informed, or if the question even makes sense. Their experiences with women could just be different, and one ended up more cynical than the other. > Btw I don't think it's OK to remove your claim that roymurdock's response was "mean" Yeah. Sorry. I was jus…

> When I read transfire's and roymurdock's comments, it's not obvious to me whose opinion is more informed,

Please watch Monty Python's sketch "Nudge nudge."

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