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Ashley Madison Ethical Issues

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Ashley Madison is a web site that promotes, and facilitates, extramarital affairs while boasting a slogan of, “Life is short, Have an affair” (AshleyMadison.com, n.d.). On July 15th, 2015 the dating site was the subject of a massive data breach that exposed sensitive data of over 33 million Ashley Madison users (Baraniuk, 2015). Not only was payment and email information leaked, but nearly 300 gigabytes of data was reportedly made available by a hacking group named Impact Team (Basu, 2015). The hacktivist groups target was aimed at the very core of the dating sites mission, arraigning affairs between married people. A secondary motive for the hacking group was the way the site would only allow a user to delete their information if they paid a $19 fee. …show more content…

One issue is the moral ramifications of a site that promotes affairs between married individuals of consenting age. The other issue is the technical side of trusting a service provider to securely store and, if need be, remove individual’s private information. In this essay there will be a focus on the technical side as to oppose the moral dilemma. While this paper in no way condones or promotes cheating on a significant other, that issue is still being decided by two consenting adults, let them decide on the specifics. It was made clear that the group that was involved with the hack cited moral issues, the group never the less, did send notice of their intentions, exposing a technical flaw, and Ashley Madison was slow to

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