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.)
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.