Organizational Doxing of Ashley Madison

The -- depending on who is doing the reporting -- cheating, affair, adultery, or infidelity site Ashley Madison has been hacked. The hackers are threatening to expose all of the company's documents, including internal e-mails and details of its 37 million customers. Brian Krebs writes about the hackers' demands.

According to the hackers, although the "full delete" feature that Ashley Madison advertises promises "removal of site usage history and personally identifiable information from the site," users' purchase details -- including real name and address -- aren't actually scrubbed.

"Full Delete netted ALM $1.7mm in revenue in 2014. It's also a complete lie," the hacking group wrote. "Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed."

Their demands continue:

"Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers' secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails. The other websites may stay online."

Established Men is another of the company's sites; this one is designed to link wealthy men with young and pretty women.

This is yet another instance of organizational doxing:

Dumping an organization's secret information is going to become increasingly common as individuals realize its effectiveness for whistleblowing and revenge. While some hackers will use journalists to separate the news stories from mere personal information, not all will.

EDITED TO ADD (7/22): I don't believe they have 37 million users. This type of service will only appeal to a certain socio-economic demographic, and it's not equivalent to 10% of the US population.

This page claims that 20% of the population of Ottawa is registered. Given that 25% of the population are children, that means it's 30% of the adult population: 189,000 people. I just don't believe it.