The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked

Re:The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked by geofft on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @12:56AM (#10083745)

I happen to agree that the business model is awful, but it's also sort of off-topic. The way in which I am displeased with someone who chooses to cheat on their spouse is very different from the way I am displeased with a company who makes money off of getting large numbers of people to cheat on their spouses, and this hack victimizes individuals more than the company. It's also very different from the way I am displeased (or really, not displeased) with someone who chose once, in a moment of weakness, to attempt to cheat on their spouse, and thought better of it shortly thereafter, or even someone who did cheat on their spouse, regretted it, apologized, and sought forgiveness. We have no idea from the data how many of those people still have email addresses and credit card numbers on file.

I do wish there was a way to distinguish between "Your facts are wrong," "I disagree with your opinion," "You're off-topic," or "You might be right and on-topic but you're not constructive" when downvoting, especially since HN norms are that the first two are appropriate uses of the downvote button. (I don't think it's very likely to be the last one, in this case.)

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Re:The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked by ougachooga on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @01:08AM (#10083773)

Thank you for that answer, which helped me see some larger issues at play.

Edit: although I also disagree that discussions of ethics and morality are off-topic for HN.

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Re:The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked by geofft on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @01:37AM (#10083834)

To be clear, I think discussions of ethics and morality in company purposes are (or at least, ought to be) very much on topic for the site as a whole. I just think that discussing the morality of this particular business on this particular comment thread is likely to risk being off-topic, because it's too easy to read it as "Yeah, but they deserved it," and maybe the company did but the story is primarily about the users, not the company itself.

Here's a proposition that I think is on-topic that we can discuss: It is, IMO, clearly irresponsible and reprehensible to go around encouraging people to break their marriage vows and then not take world-class care of the database listing the people you so encouraged. If you can't find qualified people to take world-class security measures, maybe you shouldn't be running the site at all.

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Re:The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked by caf on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @03:00AM (#10084035)

Possibly the worst bit is the "you need to pay us money to be removed from our database" aspect of the business model, which gives the whole thing a decidedly protection-racket-ish air. And then, apparently, they didn't remove you from the database even if you paid the protection money!

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Re:The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked by tremon on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @05:29AM (#10084439)

"It is, IMO, clearly irresponsible and reprehensible to go around encouraging people to break their marriage vows and then not take world-class care of the database"

It's reprehensible for any third party to go around encouraging people to break any sort of vows between any two people, and it's irresponsible for any online site with a large userbase to not take world-class care of their database. Why should the two propositions be connected?

To me, it's not more irresponsible because of the nature of the site, and it's not suddenly more reprehensible because they got hacked. In addition, I would say that leaking the database is more reprehensible than the site itself ever was.

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Re:The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked by gjm11 on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @06:14AM (#10084561)

The two propositions should be connected because how bad it is when your name shows up in some hacked company's database depends on what the hacked company is, and being outed as someone who tried to have an extramarital affair is more damaging than being outed as someone who (say) bought some shoes.

(Some people will feel that this is balanced out by the fact that these are Bad People, who deserve to have their badness exposed. If so, failing to protect the database might have been less irresponsible and reprehensible in AM's case. But it would be quite a coincidence for these things to balance perfectly. One way or the other, the service you're providing to your customers makes some difference to just how awful it is when you fail to keep their data private.)

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Re:The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked by technomancy on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @03:31AM (#10084106)

> this hack victimizes individuals more than the company

Hm; do you really think there's a chance the company will survive this? It seems unlikely.

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Re:The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked by tremon on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @05:41AM (#10084462)

Do you think the impact on the individuals (not just the site users, but their partners and children too) carries less weight than the impact on a few sleazy execs, who will most likely have no trouble setting up another revenue stream?

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Re:The Ashley Madison Database Was Leaked by lordsper on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @07:44AM (#10084817)

Not under the same name, but they might just survive if they go for a (more subtle) rebrand.

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