Ashley Madison is a well-known web site explicitly designed to help married people have extramarital affairs. Their trademarked tagline is: “Life is short. Have an affair.” They describe themselves as “the most famous name in infidelity and married dating.”
They have also been the victim of one of the most attention-getting hacks in recent history. A group calling themselves “The Impact Team” was able to illegally obtain gigabytes of Ashley Madison internal data, including a complete dump of their user accounts, and threatened to release the data if Avid Life Media—Ashley Madison’s parent company—did not shut the site down. The site stayed up, and, on August 19, the hackers made good on their threat.
Thirty-seven million user accounts were exposed. Many public figures in entertainment and politics have already been found out and publicly shamed, and more are likely to come. And it is almost certain that, shielded from the public eye, hundreds of thousands of families have been thrown into turmoil by the revelation that a loved one signed up on a cheater site.
Millions are clamoring for a way to avoid getting caught up in the mess, and Off on a Tangent is here to help. Here are ten sure-fire tips to help you avoid getting caught up in this or any future hack of a cheating web site:
- Don’t cheat on your spouse.
- Don’t even think about cheating on your spouse.
- Don’t sign up on web sites dedicated to cheating on your spouse.
- Love and respect your spouse.
- Love and respect your family.
- Love and respect yourself.
- Really, just don’t cheat on your spouse.
- Keep the promises and oaths that you make.
- Don’t be an idiot.
- Don’t cheat on your spouse.