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Ashley Madison throws $11.2m on the bed to mop up leak affair

Life is short, have a quick buck

Dating site for cheaters Ashley Madison has thrown US$11.2 million on the bed to make its 2015 data leak go away.

The site, which used the slogan “Life is short, have an affair”, was infamously hacked in 2015, lost millions of users' records, prompting a denial from Conservative MP listed in the trove and prompting face-palms-a-plenty from infosec experts who quickly found basic security mistakes on the site.

Ashley Madison and sibling site “Established Men”, which “connects ambitious and attractive young women with successful, generous men”, are now part of a Canadian outfit called Ruby Corp which last Friday announced the settlement with a group of plaintiffs.

The settlement will “contribute a total of $11.2 million USD to a settlement fund, which will provide, among other things, payments to settlement class members who submit valid claims for alleged losses resulting from the data breach and alleged misrepresentations as described further in the proposed settlement agreement.”

“Valid claims” is important, because the announcement notes that whoever broke into Ashley Madison had lots of time to rummage around inside and create fake records. “Therefore, Ruby wishes to clarify that merely because a person's name or other information appears to have been released in the data breach does not mean that person actually was a member of Ashley Madison.”

All you John Smiths and David Browns out there can therefore give up on your chance for a quick buck. And if you were a member, you probably had little chance of a quick anything: Ashley Madison's membership appears to have been 99 per cent male. ®

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