Hackers have reportedly managed to acquire the private details of an ‘affair’ dating website and are threatening to release them online.
Dating site Ashley Madison encourages its users to have extra-marital partners, writing on their homepage: “Life is short, have an affair.”
Computer security experts confirmed that they had been warned by hacking group The Impact Team that they must stop operating, or all members’ information would be released online.
This would mean that many affairs would be exposed to scorned partners.
The Impact Team reportedly said: "Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails.
"The other websites may stay online.”
The group then added: “Too bad for those men, they’re cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion.
"We’ve got the complete set of profiles in our DB dumps, and we’ll release them soon if Ashley Madison stays online.
"And with over 37 million members, mostly from the US and Canada, a significant percentage of the population is about to have a very bad day, including many rich and powerful people.”
The website offers members to wipe their history on the website for a fee of around £13, but the hacking group has hinted that they have found ways around this.
They claimed: “Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed.”
With millions of members, it looks as though there might be a few nervous love rats amongst us!