By JACK GILLUM and TED BRIDIS
The Associated Press
EDITOR’S NOTE — To follow this and other national-international news, go to the “Nation/World” button at the top of this page (www.peninsuladailynews.com).
Then go to “AP News” and click. There are also still photos and video at the AP News site.
The Associated Press, a nonprofit cooperative owned by U.S. newspapers, is the largest newsgathering agency in the world.
______________
LONDON (AP) — The spectacular breach at adultery site Ashley Madison gave rise to sordid tales of horrified spouses rushing to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases, frantic phone calls to lawyers and torrid confrontations with spouses.
But hard information has been hard to come by.
Even the true number of people affected by the breach has been clouded by uncertainty over how many of the roughly 39 million members Ashley Madison claims to have are genuine.
Here are some things to know about the adultery breach that has the world talking:
___
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN AFFECTED?
Ashley Madison claims to have had about 39 million members, but security experts who examined the internal records put the number of email addresses at 36 million.
Of those, many appear to be bogus and some may have been registered with the site without their owners’ consent. Even among those who did, it’s not clear how many used the service to seek extramarital affairs.
The Associated Press spoke to a dozen people who said they signed up once or only visited a couple of times without actually meeting anyone.
One St. Louis-area resident told AP he and his wife registered his email with the site when they visited out of curiosity several years ago. Neither ever returned. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to draw attention to his connection to the site.
___
WHO’S LOOKING THROUGH THE DATA?
Several governments have announced investigations following revelations that bureaucrats signed up to the adultery website using their work emails.
But suspicious spouses — or just nosy acquaintances — are also browsing the data.
The St. Louis man told AP he was alerted when a friend called him to say he found his name in the dump.
Chicago-based Charles Black, who along with partner Jacob Gilman briefly ran a website allowing people to check emails and telephone numbers against the database, said he recorded 500,000 unique visitors in just 48 hours.
“Our motivation for doing this is mainly just the fun of creating a tool which people on the Internet find useful,” Black said in an email.
___
WILL WE SEE A RUSH TO THE DIVORCE COURTS?
Lawyer Susan Moss predicted a “tsunami” of new cases, but family law experts are divided whether the hack will lead to significant increase in the divorce rate.
New York divorce attorney Michael DiFalco said he believed there would be “a dozen clients caught by text message for every client that might get caught this way.”
There are scattered signs of extra interest. Nigel Shepherd, an attorney with British firm Mills & Reeve, told The Times of London that a woman had contacted him after finding her husband’s name in the dump — a case British media are already describing as the first Ashley Madison divorce.
Moss, a partner with New York firm Chemtob Moss and Forman, advised wayward husbands and wives to come clean quickly.
“The news always is better received if coming from the cheating spouse directly,” she said.
___
SO ARE CHEATING SPOUSES CONFESSING?
Not all of them. Kristen V. Brown, a tech reporter at Fusion who has had telephone interviews with two dozen Ashley Madison users, said many of those she spoke to were trying to lie low.
“The people I interviewed that were in a committed relationship really feared that this would be the end of it,” she said in an email. “A lot of them hoped it would just blow over — they didn’t want to have to deal with telling their partner about it.”
___
WHAT DOES ASHLEY MADISON SAY?
Not much.
The hackers who struck Ashley Madison have accused the site of filling it with fake profiles and extorting fees for wiping profiles that were never truly deleted. Avid Life Media Inc., the site’s owner, has not returned AP messages about the alleged practices.
In fact, the site has said little beyond a statement released Tuesday in which it slammed the break-in as “an act of criminality.”
“These are illegitimate acts that have real consequences for innocent citizens who are simply going about their daily lives,” the company said.
___
OUR PREVIOUS STORY:
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. government employees with sensitive jobs in national security or law enforcement were among hundreds of federal workers found to be using government networks to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison, The Associated Press has learned.
The list includes at least two assistant U.S. attorneys, an information technology administrator in the White House’s support staff, a Justice Department investigator, a division chief, and a government hacker and counterterrorism employee at the Homeland Security Department. Others visited from networks operated by the Pentagon.
Federal policies vary by agency as to whether employees could visit websites during work hours like Ashley Madison, which could be considered akin to a dating website.
But such use raises questions about what personal business is acceptable — and what websites are OK to visit — for U.S. workers on taxpayer time, especially those with sensitive jobs who could face blackmail.
Hackers this week released detailed records on millions of people registered with the website one month after the break-in at Ashley Madison’s parent company, Toronto-based Avid Life Media Inc.
The website — whose slogan is, “Life is short. Have an affair” — is marketed to facilitate extramarital affairs.
Few connecting from federal networks had listed government email accounts when subscribing. But the AP was able to trace their government Internet connections, logged by the website over five years and as recently as June. They encompass more than two dozen agencies, such as the departments of State, Justice, Energy, Treasury and Transportation. Others came from House or Senate computer networks.
Records also reveal subscribers signed up using state and municipal government networks nationwide, including those run by the New York Police Department. “If anything comes to our attention indicating improper use of an NYPD computer, we will look into it and take appropriate action,” said NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis.
The AP is not identifying the government subscribers it found because they are not elected officials or accused of a crime.
Many federal customers appeared to use nongovernment email addresses with handles such as “sexlessmarriage,” ”soontobesingle” or “latinlovers.” Some Justice Department employees also appeared to use prepaid credit cards to help preserve their anonymity but nonetheless connected to the service from their office computers.
“I was doing some things I shouldn’t have been doing,” a Justice Department investigator told the AP. Asked about the threat of blackmail, the investigator said if prompted he would reveal his actions to his family and employer to prevent it. “I’ve worked too hard all my life to be a victim of blackmail. That wouldn’t happen,” he said.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was deeply embarrassed and not authorized by the government to speak to reporters using his name.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed Thursday the Pentagon was looking into the list of people who used military email addresses. Adultery can be a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
“I’m aware of it,” Carter said. “Of course it’s an issue because conduct is very important. And we expect good conduct on the part of our people. … The services are looking into it and as well they should be. Absolutely.”
The AP’s review was the first to reveal that federal workers used their office systems to access the site, based on their Internet Protocol addresses associated with credit card transactions. It focused on searching for government employees in especially sensitive positions who could perhaps become blackmail targets.
The government hacker at the Homeland Security Department, who did not respond to phone or email messages, included photographs of his wife and infant son on his Facebook page. One assistant U.S. attorney declined through a spokesman to speak to the AP, and another did not return phone or email messages.
A White House spokesman said Thursday he could not immediately comment on the matter. The IT administrator in the White House did not return email messages.
While rules can vary by agency, Homeland Security rules, for instance, say devices should be used for only for official purposes. It also prescribes “limited personal use is authorized as long as this use does not interfere with official duties or cause degradation of network services.”
Employees are barred from using government computers to access “inappropriate sites” including those that are “obscene, hateful, harmful, malicious, hostile, threatening, abusive, vulgar, defamatory, profane, or racially, sexually, or ethnically objectionable.”
The hackers who took credit for the break-in had accused the website’s owners of deceit and incompetence, and said the company refused to bow to their demands to close the site.
Avid Life released a statement calling the hackers criminals. It added that law enforcement in both the U.S. and Canada is investigating and declined comment beyond its statement Tuesday that it was investigating the hackers’ claims.
