Early Tuesday morning, Reuters broke the headlines that AvidLife Media, the parent business of affair-driven dating/hookup web site Ashley Madison, happens to be undergoing a probe because of the united states of america Federal Trade Commission. While AvidLife officially “said it generally does not understand the focus of its very own FTC investigation,” it’s fairly easy to find out precisely what is at issue right here.
About a 12 months ago, in july 2015, ashley madison had been hacked by a bunch referred to as impact team. The hackers proceeded to jeopardize to leak the site’s client list if AvidLife Media didn’t shut down both Ashley Madison and sibling site Founded Men, which theoretically linked young “sugar infant” females with older, wealthier, “sugar daddy” males. The database ended up being quickly released…which had been simply the end regarding the iceberg.
The very first, more immediate and apparent concern had been that the business’s option to cover to totally delete a free account didn’t seem to 
actually do anything. Exposing the reality behind the deletion that is“paid choice ended up being quickly revealed to be a main motive within the hack. The 2nd had been a thing that have been suspected but had been tough to prove until Gizmodo’s Annalen Newitz crunched the figures when you look at the database:
That the vast, great majority of feminine reports didn’t belong to real people, never as real women. Cross-referencing components of complaints towards the California Attorney General with all the site’s supply rule resulted in more proof. While currently bad, it is even worse if you think about if they were sent by Ashley Madison robots that you have to pay extra to send/reply to messages, even.
Strangely, although the Avid lifestyle Media told Reuters which they didn’t exactly know what the FTC research focuses on, Ashley Madison’s CEO stated otherwise. Rob Segal, the CEO at issue, had been quoted as stating that the “fembot” allegation is “a area of the process that is ongoing we’re going through … it is utilizing the FTC at this time.”
Back in 2014, Jason Koebler of Motherboard submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for “all complaints from 2015 to the Federal Trade Commission regarding the company Avid Life Media” and promptly got a response, with documents arriving just days later september. The complaints have huge variations: Some customers simply alerting the FTC to your hack and all of the information that is personal was floating round the internet. Others, nevertheless, had more issues that are specific similar to this man whom desired the FTC to work alongside foreign governments to utilize their abilities to censor the online world, or else “families [will be] split up,” “breadwinners potentislly lose their task,” and “tourism will definitely fall.” As an example:
This is certainly regarding the ashley madison information drip. Nonetheless, like many more i would like my information that is personal to at least somewhat restricted. Theres people that are too many & publishing links for this information, im certain that the FTC has some cap cap ability right right here. In addition Id that is amazing other nations would utilize the FTC just as if families are split up & breadwinners potentislly lose their task, tourism will undoubtedly fall. Please inform me thst thungs are increasingly being call at spot to block such links/sites & one thing needs to venture out to social networking web sites as FB & Twitter are enabling visitors to post the listings & from ehstbi [sp?] realize thsts [sic] illegal.
Of course, there were additionally less funny complaints:
- A resident concerned with users others that are impersonating different nefarious reasons after some body enrolled in a profile making use of his/her title, picture, and contact information.
- One Columbus, Ohio-based complainant implored the FTC to analyze the bot accounts because early as 2011 (props into the FTC for, at the least theoretically, creating a lot more than Koebler asked for to start with).
- Who owns the now-defunct AshleyMadisonSucks.com alleging that Avid lifestyle Media involved in a harassment campaign against him, a topic that Koebler covered at length.
There’s also a apparent concern that comes in your thoughts reading the FTC a reaction to the FOIA request: have there been really and truly just two complaints about Ashley Madison as well as its cousin web sites following the hack and simply five inside their entire existence?
Even accounting for the users potentially being focused on their privacy (although the FTC redacted all information that is personal, that appears awfully low. Fortunately, however, it seems that the FTC is inspired to do something nevertheless, just because they declined to issue a remark to Reuters concerning the research.