On Aug. 18, a hacker group called “Impact Team” accessed the information of millions of individuals who used the for-profit services of Ashley Madison, a website which essentially enables married people to cheat on their spouses. The website boasts opportunities for “discreet encounters,” contains a database of almost 40 million “anonymous users” and opens with the less-than-charming slogan: “Life is short. Have an affair.” The entire concept of this service is obviously disgusting and dishonest, but surprisingly upfront and not hypocritical. There is no sugarcoating the notion of an affair, and those who trusted in the website and offered their own personal information undoubtedly had every intention of finding someone to cheat with. However, there has been entirely too much focus on the business itself and not enough on the role of the hackers.
In an age of wiki-leaks and vigilante computer hackers, the Ashley Madison cyber-hack may not come as much of a surprise to the general public. Because we are so used to the seemingly noble invasions of privacy that many of these self-proclaimed revolutionaries carry out with various exclamations of support from the uninvolved third parties (namely, us) it is easy to celebrate the release of 37 million users’ information worldwide without considering the complexities of such a case.
While the public and media shame the company for the heinous service it provides, Ashley Madison is no more villainous than the hackers exposing the private information of users. The people who used the service have a right to their privacy, and we must remember that those same people would find a way to cheat with or without the existence of this particular website. While I don’t condone the company providing the means to cheat on one’s spouse, it is simply one medium out of many that unfaithful individuals could use to carry out the deception. Their privacy should be protected under the agreement with the company. Since the hack, various lawsuits have already been filed against Ashley Madison and its parent company, Avid Life Media, for failure to adequately protect the privacy of its consumers, but there is no telling how well these cases will stand up in court without proof of some sort of crucial oversight by the company.
The public is very fast to encourage a sort of judgment day for every man and woman who signed up for the website, but not many people think of how we would feel if our private information, one of our secrets, a piece of our own personal deception was released for the world to feast on. The public is also quick to condemn 37 million people and completely disregard the fact that this was not just a breach of privacy for the cheater, but for their spouse, their children and anyone else closely associated with them. It is also duly noted that not all of the emails in the database actually implicate the individual associated with them. Ashley Madison does not require email verification, and so simply putting in a random email will ensure an account is made without the knowledge of the alleged cheater. NPR recently interviewed Casey Corcoran, a happily married man who searched himself out of curiosity and found an account associated with his email. Corcoran has since found and tracked down the man who entered his email through a password reset and is demanding a formal confession to confirm that it wasn’t him. Although not everyone is lucky enough to have such a coincidental excuse, it is not our place to be so quick to judge.
Like it or not, the truth is that people’s marriages and subsequent infidelity are simply not the public’s business. Instead of wasting time on the countless search engines that are now dedicated to offering an expedited service of looking up cheater’s emails in the Ashley Madison database, perhaps the general public should consider taking a step back, possibly evaluating one’s own personal relationship before delving into the intricacies of another 37 million.