Ashley Madison Hacking and the Ethics of Hacktivism
| Case Code: BECG161 Case Length: 11 Pages Period: 2015-2016 Pub Date: 2018 Teaching Note: Available |
Price: Rs.300 Organization: Ashley Madison Industry: Online Dating Website Countries: Canada Themes: Business Ethics, Corporate Governance |
Abstract Case Intro 1 Case Intro 2 Excerpts
Excerpts
How Ashley Madison Made Money
Even though anybody could register on the Ashley Madison site for free, users who wanted to seek partners for relationships and to read and send messages had to pay a fee, which started at US$49. Ashley Madison worked based on the payment made by users to buy credits. The basic package was 100 credits for US$49. For 30 credits, a member got a 30-minute chat session with prospective partners. Premium customers who paid US$250 got a money-back “affair guarantee”. The website promised to pay back the money if the member did not have an affair within three months. The member, mostly the man, had to pay for five credits to initiate a conversation with another member, mostly a woman. .
Hacking by the Impact Team
On July 12, 2015, ALM employees arrived at work to find a message from Impact waiting for them. In that message, Impact stated that they had stolen the data of 37 million members of Ashley Madison. In the message, Impact said, "Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms If ALM doesn’t comply,....
Jittery Subscribers
The hacking of Ashley Madison and the negative publicity surrounding the whole issue left a lot of existing and new customers of the site fearful. They felt that their existing relationships would be in trouble if their partners came to know that they had had an affair or had looked for an affair on Ashley Madison. Ashley Madison offered the ‘full delete’ option for free as a consolation measure to users. But analysts felt that if the hacked data was genuine, then the horse was already out of the barn and nobody could control data leaked on the internet....
The Hack Aftermath
The Ashley Madison hacking resulted in chaos in different sections of society. According to media reports, two persons committed suicide after their details were leaked online. One was Captain Michael Gorhum, who had worked for 25 years with the San Antonio Police Department in Texas. His death came just days after his official email address was linked to an Ashley Madison account. Canadian police confirmed the second suicide in August 2015. This was also believed to be that of an Ashley Madison subscriber. Another high-profile victim was Jeff Ashton, State Attorney for Orange and Osceola counties in Florida, who resigned from his post after it was revealed that he was an Ashley Madison user...
Impact's Stand
The Impact Team appeared to target Ashley Madison over the questionable morals they encouraged and also due to ALM's reportedly fraudulent business practices, and had little sympathy for its victims. "Too bad for those men, they're cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion. Too bad for ALM, you promised secrecy but didn't deliver," the hackers reportedly stated. Moreover, the Impact Team offered no apologies, reiterating that in fact ALM had blackmailed its customers. Commenting on the motivations for the hack, Impact wrote,...
Exhibits
Exhibit I: Message from the Impact Team to Ashley Madison
Exhibit II: Number of Ashley Madison Accounts among the Largest Tech Companies
Exhibit III: Ashley Madison Web Traffic after the Hacking Incident
Exhibit IV: Changed Logos of Ashley Madison
Exhibit V: Ashley Madison Website – Interest over Time and Usage
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