CHEATERS FEAR; PARTNERS CHEER

Site’s hackers claim 37m personal records have been stolen from notorious dating site, with Cougar Life and Established Men also compromised

The Ashley Madison website. Photograph: Screengrab

by Alex Hern

Hackers have stolen and leaked personal information from online cheating site Ashley Madison, an international dating site with the tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair.”

The site, which encourages married users to cheat on their spouses and advertises 37 million members, had its data hacked by a group calling itself the Impact Team. At least two other dating sites, Cougar Life and Established Men, also owned by the same parent group, Avid Life Media, have had their data compromised.

The Impact Team claims to have complete access to the company’s database, including not only user records for every single member, but also the financial records of ALM and other proprietary information. For now, the group has released just 40MB of data, including credit card details and several ALM documents.

According to the information security journalist Brian Krebs, who broke the news, ALM has confirmed that the hacked material is genuine, and the company is working to remove from the net the material that has already been posted. But the initial leak is just a taster, according to the Impact Team, which accompanied the data with a manifesto threatening release of further information if Ashley Madison and Established Men are not permanently closed.

“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’s statement reads.

The hackers’ main point of contention is with the fact that Ashley Madison charges users a fee of £15 to carry out a “full delete” of their information if they decide to leave the site. Although users have the option of permanently hiding their profile free of charge, the company’s advertisements claim that the full delete service is the only way to completely remove their information from the servers.
But the hackers say that that claim is “a complete lie”.

“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,” they allege.

ALM believes it has identified the perpetrator of the hack, which it says was likely an inside job. “We’re on the doorstep of [confirming] who we believe is the culprit, and unfortunately that may have triggered this mass publication,” the company’s chief executive, Noel Biderman, told Krebs. “I’ve got their profile right in front of me, all their work credentials. It was definitely a person here that was not an employee but certainly had touched our technical services.”

The data dump seems to back-up that theory to a certain extent, specifically apologising to the company’s director of security. “You did everything you could, but nothing you could have done could have stopped this,” the manifesto reads.

In a statement, ALM said: “We apologise for this unprovoked and criminal intrusion into our customers’ information. The current business world has proven to be one in which no company’s online assets are safe from cyber-vandalism, with Avid Life Media being only the latest among many companies to have been attacked, despite investing in the latest privacy and security technologies.

“At this time, we have been able to secure our sites, and close the unauthorised access points. We are working with law enforcement agencies, which are investigating this criminal act. Any and all parties responsible for this act of cyber–terrorism will be held responsible.”

Ashley Madison, along with a number of other dating sites, had already been criticised for the lack of care taken over customer information at least once before. In 2012, the online rights campaign group EFF examined eight popular dating sites, and found that just one, Zoosk, carried out simple security precautions such as enabling encrypted connections by default. In the EFF’s study, however, Ashley Madison was explicitly praised for deleting data after users closed their account.

ALM later said it had used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) to demand the removal of online posts about the incident “as well as all personally identifiable information about our users published online.”

Posts on Twitter which had apparently earlier linked to pages containing hacked material were now bringing up “page not found” results, the Guardian found.

ALM also said it is now offering its full-delete option free to any customer to help them protect their privacy.

original article here

Don't Shoot the Messenger: Google Can't be Held Responsible for Defamatory Blog Posts

by Tom Gardner

A High Court judge has likened Google to a graffiti strewn wall in a landmark judgement which says it cannot be held responsible for libellous or offensive content.

Mr Justice Eady said the internet giant was not bound by laws governing publishers, giving the company widespread immunity from English defamation laws.

In the judgement, which will have huge implications for freedom of speech in this country, he said: ‘It is no doubt often true that the owner of a wall which has been festooned, overnight, with defamatory graffiti could acquire scaffolding and have it all deleted with whitewash.’

'We should never have liberated France': David Starkey courts yet more controversy by claiming nations should be left to free themselves from oppression. His case against Google Inc over reactions to a blog labelling him, without justification, as a drug dealer and a thief, is now dead in the water.

Mr Tamiz sued over eight stinging ‘comments’ made in reaction to a blog posted on Google’s Blogger.com platform.

Amongst other things, they accused him of being a drug dealer and having stolen from his employers.

The judge said the allegations could not necessarily be dismissed as ‘mere vulgar abuse’ and it was ‘not altogether surprising’ that Mr Tamiz chose to sue Google as most of the posts were anonymous and it would have been difficult to track down those responsible.

But the judge was stinging of Google's lateness in reacting to Mr Tamiz's compaint, saying there was a ‘considerable delay’ before the blogger was contacted and the posts were removed.

Payam Tamiz was forced to resign as a Conservative candidate in last year's local council elections after posting inappropriate comments on the internet referring to women.

Mr Tamiz said: ‘I understand that my Facebook remarks were inappropriate and I unreservedly apologise for the offence they have caused. However, I feel it is important to put the remarks into context. They were made long before I was a member of the Conservative Party and long before I entered the political arena. They were made at a time of personal trouble and difficulty and I never intended for them to be interpreted as an unfair generalisation for the women of Thanet. I am deeply saddened that they have been taken out of context and misconstrued. I have resigned from the Conservative Party in the hope that this affair, which is being exploited and distorted by the opposition, does not damage the Party's electoral success...'

Catrin Evans, for Google, argued ‘it has no control over any of this content’ and, far from being a publisher, is merely ‘a neutral service provider’.

The judge said: ‘Google Inc makes the point that it has no way of knowing whether the comments complained of were true or not, or subject to some other defence in law.

‘It argues that it cannot reasonably be expected to investigate and determine the truth or falsity of allegations made by bloggers’.

He added: ‘One needs to be wary of analogies when considering modern technology, but it may perhaps be said that the position is, according to Google Inc, rather as though it owned a wall on which various people had chosen to inscribe graffiti. It does not regard itself as being more responsible for the content of these graffiti than would the owner of such a wall’.

Mr Justice Eady added: ‘I would be prepared to hold that it should not be regarded as a publisher, or even as one who authorises publication, under the established principles of common law. As I understand the evidence, its role, as a platform provider, is a purely passive one. I would rule that Google Inc is not liable at common law as a publisher.’

Google Inc sought almost £28,000 in legal costs against Mr Tamiz, but the judge said that figure was ‘somewhat disproportionate’ and cut it by one third.

He added that Mr Tamiz had been ‘confronted by allegations about drug dealing and stealing from his employers which no one suggested were remotely true’ and could not be blamed for going to court to remove the smear from his character.

The court heard Mr Tamiz is ‘not a man of means’ and the judge acknowledged that he ‘may not be in a position to meet’ Google’s legal costs bills, £5,000 of which he was ordered to pay within 28 days.

original article here

Irish Student Crucified on the Internet

By Warren Swords and Debbie Mccann



(U.K.) An innocent student who had his name blackened on the internet has comprehensively cleared his name – thanks to the Irish Mail on Sunday.

Dublin student Eoin McKeogh, accused of dodging a €50 taxi fare, has laid bare how the internet can destroy a blameless person's reputation in seconds and put people in the horrifying position of either leaving vile allegations in the public domain or pursuing a difficult and costly legal battle through the courts that will attract more attention from the media.

The entire episode has proven how social media such as Facebook and Twitter constitute something of a Wild West when it comes to laws of defamation, where anonymous users can accuse innocent people of crimes without any proof, in a spiralling nightmare of libel and slander.

Mr McKeogh's ordeal began in December when a taxi driver posted a video taken inside his cab on YouTube of a young man running from his taxi without paying the fare.

The video – dated November 13 – clearly shows the man's face and a friend can be heard calling him 'Eoin'.

Within hours, the video had spread to Facebook, Twitter and other internet forums. One anonymous viewer commented on YouTube – wrongly – that the culprit was Eoin McKeogh.

Soon, his name spread across the internet and social media sites and people began sending vitriolic messages to Mr McKeogh's Facebook page calling him a 'scumbag', a 'thief' and worse.

In January, he went to the gardaí twice to see what could be done, before taking legal advice. The matter came before the courts for the first time on January 10. During that hearing, Mr McKeogh provided the judge with his passport, which showed he had entered Japan on November 11 and left the Far East on November 22.

The video was filmed on November 13, while Mr McKeogh was studying in Japan.

'I was not and could not have been the person in the video,' he said in his affidavit to the court, where he is seeking an injunction to have the video permanently removed from the web.

Since the case was reported and he was named in certain newspapers, he is now also seeking an injunction to stop them naming him again.

His senior counsel, Pauline Whalley, told the court that on January 13, the taxi driver appeared in court and gave evidence that the taxi fare evader was not Eoin McKeogh and that he didn't even look like the culprit.

The driver apologised to Mr McKeogh for the trouble the video had caused, saying it was a 'terrible thing' to happen to him. 'He shook my hand and apologised,' said Mr McKeogh in his affidavit. The High Court granted him a temporary injunction on Tuesday against Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Google from hosting the video online for a week. A subsequent full hearing into his effort to gain injunctions against six newspapers began yesterday but was adjourned last night until today.

Mr McKeogh said he thought his nightmare was over but that he was still being accused online following court reports of the case.

'I was shocked to see all the postings [on the internet]. They all presumed I was guilty… and attempting to gag the media. I also had a fake Facebook page created.'

In a desperate attempt to clear his name, he even replied to tormentors online, sending them a photograph of himself and his boarding pass from his flight from Tokyo with his travel dates clearly visible.

One website, Broadsheet.ie, reproduced the photograph and a link to the video and told readers: 'You decide.'

According to his legal team, internet commentators continued to accuse Mr McKeogh and posted: 'Why the f*** do injunctions exist? I hope the f*** it blights his career.'

Yesterday afternoon in Court 45, Mr McKeogh asked for an injunction against several newspapers to stop them from printing his name in relation to the case and the video.

Barrister Miss Whalley was critical of the media for not reporting his innocence in the stories and argued against newspapers naming him again due to the public perception that there is no smoke without fire.

She said: 'People believe on a massive scale that he's guilty.'

In response, Mr Justice Michael Peart said: 'The smoke will remain thick – perhaps diluted, as it could not be and was not him.'

Mr Justice Peart said he would consider his decision overnight and make a ruling today at 2.30pm.

Despite offering incontrovertible proof in court that it wasn't him and successfully getting an injunction against YouTube showing the video, the footage was back on the website last night with users identifying him as the culprit, calling him a 'scumbag' and other highly derogatory comments.

The 22-year-old told the packed court yesterday how malicious allegations has ruined his life and could irreversibly damage his promising academic prospects.

Following the successful injunction, 95 per cent of the material posted online about Mr McKeogh was removed.

However, the following day, media organisations reported the court case and according to Miss Whalley 'it went viral again' with people 'saying he was guilty, he can pay high wages of lawyers but not a taxi fare.'

She said her client was not a Seán Quinn or a Seán FitzPatrick but 'an ordinary kid going through college and getting on with his life.

'With a few key strokes, you can destroy a person's reputation,' the barrister said.

Judge Peart described it as 'strange' that newspaper did not include the proof of his innocence in their reports.

original article here