The Sordid Messiness of the Ashley Madison Hack
At The Verge, Casey Newton explores just how messy things could get with the release of stolen information from AshleyMadison.com, a Web site for connecting people who want to have affairs. Other high profile breaches have mostly revolved around credit card numbers or other relatively innocuous (if financially troubling) pieces of data. But since the Ashley Madison data reveals — or could be interpreted to reveal — far more personal information, it opens up a family-sized can of worms. The takeaway, which may be too late for up to 36 million people, is that you want to be very, very careful about what sort of confidential information you share online, since even sites with the best of intentions can fall prey to determined attackers.