Individuals who were using a website to cheat on their spouses and significant others will not remain anonymous if they choose to remain on the lawsuit against that website–Ashley Madison. This week a judge ruled that anyone who continues in the legal fight will not be allowed to use pseudonyms in the lawsuit.

Let’s start at the beginning of this whole mess: this lawsuit began in response to last summer’s hack of the Ashley Madison website, a service with the motto: “Life is short. Have an Affair.” The website, which purports to facilitate men and women in finding people to have affairs with, is used most predominantly by men. In the hack, 11 million account passwords were discovered because of improperly secured accounts. This led to the release of 32 million customers’ emails, sexual preferences, names, and addresses on the internet, which caused backlash in small communities, investigations of government employees found using the site, and even the blackmailing of some individuals whose information was released.

In response to the release of personal information, several Ashley Madison users have decided to sue the company for claiming to secure personal information and then failing to do so. While many of their identities have already been released, the plaintiffs petitioned to use pseudonyms in the case in order to protect themselves from judgment of the public.

Unfortunately for the roughly 50 people suing Ashley Madison, Judge John A. Ross, a United States District Judge, ruled on April 6th to deny the motion for plaintiffs in the case to use pseudonyms. Part of the judge’s ruling was based on the fact that:

The personal and financial information plaintiffs seek to protect has already been released on the Internet and made available to the public.

In addition, the judge acknowledged the fact that:

Only in extraordinary circumstances may civil litigation proceed under fake names, like in cases such as sex crimes and suits about juveniles.

What the judge did allow is for the members who are currently involved in the suit to dismiss their complaints and instead file as members of a class in a class-action suit. If it is certified they will not need to release their names individually in order to sue.

A lot of the people whose names were released in the hack have faced serious consequences because of the release of information. Some people have been blackmailed into paying bitcoin bribes in order to try to stop blackmailers from ousting the cheaters to their oblivious spouses. Town officials have been shamed by their local newspapers and publications.

While the huge breach in security was unexpected for the members of the Ashley Madison site and the people whose information was released may have legal standing to sue the company, it’s hard to have much sympathy for cheaters whose significant others found out about their infidelity. This is a good lesson for all of us to be a little more skeptical about the security of personal information online and the reality of bad karma. Next time you go online to find a hot date with whom to two-time your wife, maybe think twice before plugging in your government email address.

Alexandra Simone

Alex Simone is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street and a student at The George Washington University, studying Political Science. She is passionate about law and government, but also enjoys the finer things in life like watching crime dramas and enjoying a nice DC brunch. Contact Alex at ASimone@LawStreetmedia.com

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Last week’s top stories ran the gamut from cheating spouses to the best places to get a joint J.D./M.B.A degree. The top story of the week was a breakdown of the strangest arrests making the news, followed by a look at the Ashley Madison hack and the future of online privacy. The #3 story was the J.D./M.B.A. ranking for the University of California-Berkeley School of Law. ICYMI, check out the top posts from last week:

#1 Weird Arrests of the Week

It’s the end of the week, which means its time to relax and reflect on all the stupid things people have done this week. Specifically, some fantastically odd arrests. Check out the slideshow here.

#2 Ashley Madison Hack: The Future of Online Privacy Doesn’t Look Good

A few weeks ago, a group of hackers called the “Impact Team” threatened to expose the profiles of people who had accounts on Ashley Madison, a dating site specifically aimed at married people who are looking to cheat. The hackers threatened to “release customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails” if the site was not taken down. The parent company–Avid Life Media–did not comply, and now that data has been released to the public. Read the full story here.

#3 Top 10 Schools for J.D./M.B.A. Programs: #9 University of California-Berkeley School of Law

The legal industry is changing and law schools are no exception. Applications and enrollment are both down, and the value of the traditional legal education with its current price tag is the subject of continual debate. Law Street Specialty Rankings are a detailed resource for prospective law students as they consider the many law schools across the country. Law Street Specialty Rankings blend the quantitative and qualitative in a way that accurately highlights the top law schools based on specialty programs. Check out the University of California-Berkeley School of Law’s ranking here.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ICYMI: Best of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

A few weeks ago, a group of hackers called the “Impact Team” threatened to expose the profiles of people who had accounts on Ashley Madison, a dating site specifically aimed at married people who are looking to cheat. The hackers threatened to “release customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails” if the site was not taken down. The parent company–Avid Life Media–did not comply, and now that data has been released to the public. The Impact Team hackers have now shed a very personal light on cheating spouses around the globe–but the potential overall ramifications are significantly more jarring than the awkward conversations that some members are probably going to have with their spouses tonight.

Massive data hacks are nothing new–the Sony and Target hacks warranted significant news coverage for weeks, and the Office of Personnel Management hack earlier this summer compromised the data of over 20 million people. However, this Ashley Madison hack may rank among the largest yet. As Ars Technica points out:

Researchers are still poring over the unusually large dump, but already they say it includes user names, first and last names, and hashed passwords for 33 million accounts, partial credit card data, street names, and phone numbers for huge numbers of users, records documenting 9.6 million transactions, and 36 million e-mail addresses.

The hackers targeted Ashley Madison in particular for a few reasons, but one of the biggest sticking points appeared to be that they didn’t agree with Ashley Madison’s business practices when it came to handling data. Specifically, they took issue with the fact that Ashley Madison charged users to delete their data, and then didn’t. Impact Team further explained about its hacking motives:

Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men. We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data. Find someone you know in here? Keep in mind the site is a scam with thousands of fake female profiles. See ashley madison fake profile lawsuit; 90-95 percent of actual users are male. 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 claim damages. Then move on with your life. Learn your lesson and make amends. Embarrassing now, but you’ll get over it.

What is particularly concerning about this hack, however, is what it signals about any site where personal information is provided. This isn’t just about stealing individuals’ social security and credit card numbers, like so many hacks in the past. This involves private information, and while it’s easy to justify that this private information has been breached because the people who provided it did so willingly in the hopes of engaging in an affair, it’s not that simple.

Online privacy is something we’ve all taken for granted for so long–we probably shouldn’t have, but that ship has completely sailed. Things like our private communications, our medical records, and sometimes yes, our dating or sexual preferences, can be found online. It’s easy to ignore the Ashley Madison hack because it was aimed at people that are in a very moral gray area, but it can just as easily happen, and may happen, when it comes to other personal information. The Impact Team did show the power of hacking. Despite the nature of the hack, it’s time that we realize its seriousness when it comes to our expectations of online privacy.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Ashley Madison Hack: The Future of Online Privacy Doesn’t Look Good appeared first on Law Street.

Dating websites are nothing new to our generation. Singles go online, make a profile, and meet people similar to them with hopes of finding their soulmate and happily ever after–or so we thought. A different kind of dating website with some taboo clientele is changing the matchmaking game, and hackers don’t like it.

AshleyMadison.com is a dating website for people who are not so single…in fact, they’re usually married. Millions (yes millions) of married people have gone to the site to have secret affairs. Although Ashley Madison claims to be discreet, users of the site are now nervously watching for news updates after hackers calling themselves the “Impact Team” stole their personal information from the site late Sunday, and are now threatening to expose it.

AshleyMadison, a website for people seeking affairs, boasts 37 million users. It was hacked. http://t.co/lisUnFg839 pic.twitter.com/UIKaxIa0nC

— WSJD (@WSJD) July 20, 2015

The site, which has over 37 million users, prides itself on being the “world’s leading married dating service for discreet encounters.” It even offers users who want to erase their sneaky past a “full delete” feature (for a $19 fee) that promises to delete all of the user’s personal data from the server. However, the hackers are claiming that this feature is a complete scam and the data of those who paid for it was never deleted.

According to Brian Krebs, the blogger behind Krebs on Security, the hackers have warned that if Ashley Madison and its sister site, EstablishedMen.com, are not taken down for good they will “release customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails.” Impact Team went on to mock the site and its users writing,

Too bad for those men, they’re cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion. Too bad for ALM [Avid Media Life, the parent company], you promised secrecy but didn’t deliver. We’ve got the complete set of profiles in our DB dumps, and we’ll release them soon if Ashley Madison stays online. And with over 37 million members, mostly from the US and Canada, a significant percentage of the population is about to have a very bad day, including many rich and powerful people.”

Unfortunately for Ashley Madison hack victims, sympathizers are few. Some people are even glad the site was hacked, and think the information being released would be a good thing.

I see the ‘Ashley Madison’ website has been hacked and they’re threatening to expose everyone on it. GOOD, cheating should not be condoned.

— Ashley (@Ashleyybrewer) July 20, 2015

In a statement responding to the hack Avid Media Life said,

We were recently made aware of an attempt by an unauthorized party to gain access to our systems…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.

CEO of Ashley Madison, Noel Biderman, believes that the attack was an inside job by someone who has worked with the company’s technical services before and that he is getting close to confirming who the culprit is. But was Ashley Madison cheating cheaters? If the company’s “full delete” feature is in fact a scam, it cheated users out of an estimated $1.7 million during 2014, and could be cause for some serious lawsuits against the company.

For now Ashley Madison is still up and running. The excerpts from the site that have been leaked by the hackers were taken down; however, this doesn’t get the cheaters off the hook. The Impact Team still reportedly has a copy of the full database so users might want to think twice before continuing their “discreet” affairs.

Taelor Bentley

Taelor is a member of the Hampton University Class of 2017 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Taelor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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