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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWP: Don’t gloat about the Ashley Madison leak. It’s about way more than infidelity.
But the Internet soon turned its ire on other suspected Ashley Madison members, such as university professors and other SJWs, a derogatory acronym for social justice warriors, or people who speak out publicly against discrimination.
Computer security expert Graham Cluley quickly warned against such witch hunts on his blog.
For one thing, being a member of a dating site, even a somewhat seedy one like Ashley Madison, is no evidence that you have cheated on your partner, he wrote. You might have joined the site years before when you were single and be shocked that they still have your details in their database, or you might have joined the site out of curiosity or for a laugh never seriously planning to take things any further.
Ashley Madisons Korean Web site is shown on a computer screen in Seoul. (Lee Jin-man/AP)
You might be a journalist who joined to write about Ashley Madison, for example. Or, as some self-described Ashley Madison users have said on Reddit, you may be in an open marriage.
But more importantly than all of that, if your e-mail address is in the Ashley Madison database it means nothing, Cluley wrote. The owner of that e-mail address may never have even visited the Ashley Madison site.
Linkage
So many casting stones around here in the other thread with a sense of superiority. There's far more to it than that in the end, especially if you care about internet privacy - even if you don't believe such a thing exists.
It's all fun and games until it happens to you. Maybe OKCupid will be next and it'll tear down a whole other group of folks. Or Amazon. Or folks who buy stuff from lingerie/sex toy stores.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Once all the chuckling dies down, it will sink in that the Chinese are matching up the email addresses with their database of US government employees, in order to find targets to compromise.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)"It's all fun and games until it happens to you."
Until we get corporations out of our politics, there will never be true protections for privacy.
b.durruti
(102 posts)Sheldon Cooper
(3,724 posts)I thought the Ashley Madison site was for the express purpose of married people having affairs. If you're single, there are tons of dating websites you could join.
And if you're a journalist researching a story, I'm sure you can document your membership for work purposes. And if you're in an open marriage, I'm sure your spouse can verify this.
I suppose you could join up just for shits and giggles, but that's really kinda weird.
kcr
(15,320 posts)so they target attached partners. They like the attention married partners give them without all the boring, day to day stuff in a real relationship. They'd drop them in a hot minute if the partner left their spouses for them and it got real.
I agree. The people who join for other reasons generally aren't going to be worried about it, so it's silly to use that as an argument.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)These things morph and explode.
The original idea (from when it was an advertiser on the Howard Stern show) was that two married people would have an equal amount to lose, and therefore it would eliminate blackmail, emotional or otherwise.
I have a friend who signed up because he likes older women and he's single. So the rules have kind of eroded I guess.