Monday morning could've been a very, very awkward one for the 37 million members of Ashley Madison, a website that helps married people cheat.
Late Sunday night, the site was hacked by a group calling themselves "The Impact Team." The hackers claim to have gained access to reams of user data beyond any voyeur's wildest dreams: "customers' secret sexual fantasies," "nude pictures and conversations," "credit card transactions" with real names and addresses.
In the near future, the Impact Team promised, they'd post all that dirt online. But the fact that hackers got access to this information is far less scary than their proclaimed reason for going after Ashley Madison: In a manifesto reported by Krebs on Security, Impact Team alleges the site stored compromising, personal data on its users even after charging them to delete their accounts. (A spokesperson for Ashley Madison declined to comment.)
That, more than anything, would seem to prove the immortality of our online sins: There's no erasing the digital past. It can only - precariously - be reined in.
Here, for reference, is how Ashley Madison's "Full Delete" feature worked. Suppose you thought about stepping out on your spouse, started up an Ashley Madison profile and then promptly regretted it. Ashley Madison gives you three ways to act on your regret: (1) to hide your profile from search, meaning users you don't already know will struggle to find it; (2) to hide the profile entirely, which will make it invisible but still allow you to reactive it; and (3) the big one: the "Full Delete," which promises to nuke every message you'd ever sent or received, all your browsing history and any other evidence that you'd ever so much as heard of Ashley Madison/dreamt about cheating.
