Summary: A $578 million lawsuit has been filed by two Canadian law firms after hackers revealed personal information related to Ashley Madison, a dating site for married individuals seeking an affair.
Ashley Madison’s slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair.” For 39 million men and women who decided to peruse the website, their secret is out.
Recently, hackers breached Ashley Madison’s servers, and obtained a list of names, email addresses, and physical addresses that were linked to accounts on the website. Following threats to release the information to the public, the hackers revealed the names of those who may have kicked their wedding vows to the curb.
Now, according to Time, two Canadian law firms have filed a $578-million class action suit against the companies that operate the Ashley Madison website.
Charney Lawyers and Sutts, Strossberg LLP filed the complaints on Thursday on behalf of Canadian citizens whose information was revealed. The defendants named in the suit are Avid Dating Life and Avid Life Media.
The class will have to be certified by the court.
In a statement, the firms said, “Numerous former users of AshleyMadison.com have approached the law firms to inquire about their privacy rights under Canadian law. They are outraged that AshleyMadison.com failed to protect its users’ information. In many cases, the users paid an additional fee for the website to remove all of their user data, only to discover that the information was left intact and exposed.”
The statement added that the suit will not seek damages from the hackers that actually released the information.
In previous statements, Ashley Madison argued that members cannot be accused of having extramarital relationships simply because they purchased a membership with the site. However, it is doubtful that the spouses of these current and former members would buy such an argument.
Ashley Madison was flooded with traffic after adultery was legalized in South Korea.
Ashley Madison has also offered a $500,000 reward for information related to the hacking, Yahoo Tech adds.
The plaintiff is Eliot Shore. Shore said he briefly joined the site after he lost his wife to breast cancer. Shore denied meeting any members of the site, and said that he never cheated on his wife.
In 2014, New Hampshire repealed its adultery laws.
In a separate article, BBC claims that two Canadians actually committed suicide after their information was allegedly revealed in the leak.
A $5 million class action was filed in July in the state of Missouri. The female plaintiff in that case, who remains anonymous, argued that she paid the $19 fee to erase her information, which clearly did not work.
Source: Time
Photo credit: mirror.co.uk