Infamous adultery website Ashley Madison is in hot water over a recent data breach, facing a $578-million class action lawsuit in Canada.
Back on July 19, a hacking group called the Impact Team breached the adultery website and got their hands on massive amounts of data. The group threatened to dump a whopping 9.6GB of membership data online unless Ashley Madison shut down within a month. The website continued its operations as if nothing happened and the hackers dumped the data online, following through with their threat.
The issue raised lots of controversy and sparked an uproar worldwide, with numerous marriages likely coming to an end once that data hit the web. The information not only contains members' login credentials, phone numbers and email addresses, but also more intimate details such as their sexual preferences, fetishes and fantasies.
Some users might have joined the site using fake credentials, but many were less inspired and used their real information, which means they're more affected by the security breach and data dump.
"The criminal, or criminals, involved in this act have appointed themselves as the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society," Ashley Madison said in a recent statement, noting that law enforcement agencies are currently investigating the matter.
The millions of Ashley Madison memberships that were compromised and made public will not go without legal consequences, however. As expected, Ashley Madison is now facing lawsuits over the data breach and two law firms in Ontario, Canada got things started on behalf of Ashley Madison members in Canada whose personal information was compromised in the attack.
Ontario-based Sutts Strosberg and Charney Lawyers are the law firms representing Canadian members of the adultery website, hitting Ashley Madison's operators - Avid Media Life and Avid Dating Life - with a $578 million class-action lawsuit.
According to CTV News, the plaintiffs allege negligence, breach of contract, breach of privacy and other violations.
"They were promised confidentiality," noted David Robins, partner at law firm Sutts Strosberg. "The reason they were enticed to go to Ashley Madison was the promise of anonymity, and now all that information has been leaked."
On the other hand, the two law firms are having trouble convincing affected Ashley Madison members to add their name to the class-action suit, as most of them want to remain anonymous. So far, only one person agreed to add his name to the lawsuit, CTV reports.
Nevertheless, if at least one or two people add their names to the lawsuit, Canadian law allows class action to proceed with the rest of the plaintiffs remaining anonymous, explains Ted Charney of Charney Lawyers.
It remains to be seen whether Canadian courts will allow the action to proceed as a national class-action lawsuit.
