Summary: Many of the individuals whose Ashley Madison profile information was released by hackers have desperately tried to explain away how their names or email addresses were linked to profiles on the affair website.
Two Republican politicians from Louisiana are just two of the millions of individuals whose Ashley Madison profile information was released by hackers. Ashley Madison is a hookup website for married men and women. The politicians, of course, denied any wrongdoing, and argued that they could explain how their information just happened to end up on the website.
Jason Dore, the Louisiana GOP executive director, explained that an account listed under his name, which listed his credit card billing address, was simply used for “opposition research” at his law firm, Dore Jeansonne.
Dore said, “As the state’s leading opposition research firm, our law office routinely searches public records, online databases and websites of all types to provide clients with comprehensive reports. Our utilization of this site was for standard opposition research. Unfortunately, it ended up being a waste of money and time.”
The site was flooded with traffic after adultery was legalized in South Korea.
Ryan Heck, Baton Rouge Metro Councilman, also explained away any wrongdoing on his part. He stated on Facebook that he “went to Ashley Madison as a joke 5 years ago. Never went back.” To further emphasize his innocence, he added, “#smokinghotwife.”
Talab Abu Arar, a Bedouin Arab lawmaker in Israel, was also busted. His parliamentary email address was found in the list of leaked information. However, he laughed it off, since he, like many Bedouin Arabs, practices polygamy. He said, “I’m not lacking in women.” Still, he expressed frustration that his information was on the list. “Someone wanted simply to hurt my good name…it is very annoying,” he complained.
Hackers stated that they posted the details of millions of individuals who had registered with the website. The massive leak may change how the Internet is used altogether.
In fact, hundreds of U.S. government employees, including some with jobs in law enforcement, Congress, and the Whitehouse, used their Internet service in federal offices to browse the site for potential hookup partners and pay their membership fees. Defense Secretary Ash Carter stated that the Pentagon was examining the list of names associated with military email addresses.
In 2014, Monica Lewinsky said that her affair with Bill Clinton was consensual.
Business Insider actually released a chart, demonstrating how many dollars per capita were spent on the site by each state. Alabama was at the top of the list, followed by Colorado and Washington, D.C.
Individual cities and states are also looking into the leaked information. For example, one news station in Memphis noted that it discovered seven Ashley Madison accounts linked to City of Memphis employees, “six with the state of Tennessee, one with a Shelby County government domain, one from Germantown and eight from the city of Nashville.”
As for California, the Los Angeles Times reported, “email addresses on the list included those for employees of the state departments of Transportation, General Services, Public Health, Corrections and Rehabilitation, Industrial Relations and Water Resources, as well as the state judiciary. No elected officials were on the list of government emails.”
Several accounts from government officials in Illinois were also found, and Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black was studying whether employees should be fired for using their city accounts to sign up for Ashley Madison. “We will look at our Internet-use policy,” he remarked.
According to some reports, John Travolta had a six year affair with another man.
Of course, the United States wasn’t the only country whose citizens were looking for an affair. In Ireland, “more than 300 email addresses linked to some of the country’s most prestigious” institutions were released.
Use of the site would be much more serious for those in Saudi Arabia. Its citizens may be put to death for committing adultery. For the 1,200 Saudi Arabians whose emails were released by the hackers, this could mean serious trouble.
In Australia, radio DJs asked listeners to call in if they wanted to see if their spouse’s information was listed. A woman called, explaining that her husband had been acting weird since the news of the hacking broke. Unfortunately for her, his information did come up in the search results. She cried, “Are you serious? Are you freaking kidding me? These websites are disgusting.” She then hung up.
Source: Washington Post
Photo credit: CNBC