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Tamsin Smythe first discovered the Ashley Madison website – which helps men and women have discreet affairs – had been hacked when her phone began ringing off the hook.
The single business consultant says “I was in a meeting and all of a sudden my phone is dancing across the table.
“I’m trying to concentrate and I’m looking over and I’m seeing the names of business associates, business clients, friends of mine, people I had met on Ashley Madison contacting me and my heart sank.”
Over the next few weeks and months, wives of the men she had met on the site began to contact her. “They were decimated and hurt and they wanted to talk.’
But Smythe got off comparatively easily. The website attack resulted in scores of divorces and recriminations. About 35 million users had their personal details available for the world to see, impacting relationships, marriages and families, with reports of suicide surfacing due to the massive breach of privacy.
Now, the UK’s Channel 4 has released Sex, Lies and Cyber Attacks. The documentary follows the controversial dating site that was specifically marketed to adulterers, and the tragic impact the attack had on its users and their personal lives.
The documentary looked at the rise of Ashley Madison and the website’s CEO, Noel Biderman, who was given 30 days to shut down the site before the hack was complete, but refused.
One of the biggest revelations was that many of the “women” on Ashley Madison were actually fembots; and that 95 per cent of the users were male.
To this day, the hackers have still never been identified.
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