Josh Duggar Josh Duggar
Millions of panicked Ashley Madison members and their suspicious spouses have crashed websites hosting the “cheat sheet” of 37 million users worldwide, including more than a million Britons.
Several searchable databases of names and sexual fantasies linked the data hack had to shut down within minutes of going live because they could not cope with demand, MailOnline can reveal.
A series of world maps plotting where the Ashley Madison members live have also been plotted and posted online.
Hackers yesterday put millions of marriages at risk after they published the entire Ashley Madison database online, including names, addresses, credit card details and sexual fantasies.
At least a dozen searchable databases have been set up to allow people to check who was on the cheat list, but today only a small number appear to be still working.
The Ashley Madison leak has claimed its first celebrity victim.
Former 19 Kids and Counting star Josh Duggar has been outed for having paid nearly $1 000 (about R12 988) for two monthly subscriptions to the extramarital affairs site.
Duggar’s accounts were set up at the time he served as an executive director for the Family Research Council (FRC), a conservative Christian lobbying group which seeks to “champion marriage and family as the foundation of civilisation, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society”.
“FRC shapes public debate and formulates public policy that values human life and upholds the institutions of marriage and the family?”
The Ashley Madison billing details list two addresses, the first for a family home in Arkansas which featured on the reality show. It is also the address where Duggar’s wife Anna gave birth to their first child.
The second billing address is for Duggar’s current home in Maryland. On this account, Duggar allegedly paid $250 for an “affair guarantee”.
When Dugger still worked for the FRC, a group which also opposes same-sex relationships, Duggar claims that his family was “the epitome of conservative values”.
The account went inactive in the same month (May this year) that Duggar was accused of molesting five underage girls while he was a teenager. That revelation led to the cancellation of 19 Kids and Counting. Two of the girls turned out to be his sisters. Duggar resigned from the FRC as a result.
On Ashley Madison, Duggar listed his interests as “Conventional Sex, Experimenting with Sex Toys, One-Night Stands, Open to Experimentation, Gentleness, Good With Your Hands, Sensual Massage, Extended Foreplay/Teasing, Bubble Bath for 2, Likes to Give Oral Sex, Likes to Receive Oral Sex, Someone I Can Teach, Someone Who Can Teach Me, Kissing, Cuddling & Hugging, Sharing Fantasies, and Sex Talk”.
Ashley Madison could be sued by millions of members outed by hackers, lawyers have said.
Bosses could also face a fine of £500 000 in Britain for breaching data protection regulations if it emerges it failed to take “appropriate” security measures before the hack.
Data protection specialist Paula Barrett, from Eversheds, believes there may be a rush for “no-win no fee” cases as firms rush to cash in on the shame.
She told the Financial Times: “It would not surprise me if people came forward to bring claims against Ashley Madison.”
Those who had accounts set up maliciously by enemies and may also have grounds to sue.
A woman from the St Louis, Missouri, identified in court papers as “Jane Doe”, filed a federal lawsuit against Avid Life just days after the breach became public, saying that she had paid the website a $19 fee to permanently delete her information.
The hackers have claimed that the information of people who paid the fee never actually was deleted, citing it as one of their reasons for the attack.
Others say, however, people may not want to go to court because they would be confirm they were on the “cheat list”.
Insurance lawyer Tim Smith, from BLM, says the British Information Commissioner could punish Ashley Madison with a huge fine if they could have prevented the breach.
One web developer who helped publish the data after it was released said: “To Ashley Madison’s development team: You should be embarrassed for your train wreck of a database (and obviously security), not sanitising your phone numbers to your database is completely amateur, it’s as if the entire site was made by students.”
One hacker said today: “I created a database for the public to search but within two minutes after making it live it crashed” because of “tons of hits”.
He said that he had wanted to allow people to see the list because it was “karma for cheaters”.
It has also been reported that some criminals are also are tricking worried cheaters into outing themselves.
People are being warned not to use sites that demand a slew of personal details before offering them access to the database because they may be later blackmailed. – Daily Mail