Hackers threaten to release details of millions of cheating spouses after hacking Ashley Madison adultery website

Millions of love cheats at risk of being found out after dating site hacked. Ashley Madison adultery website has 37million members around the world.

Millions of members of a website set up for cheating spouses are waiting to hear whether their infidelity will be revealed by hackers.

The Ashley Madison website promises its 37million members worldwide - including 1.2million in the UK - complete 'anonymity' and has the motto: ‘Life is short. Have an affair.’

But a group calling themselves the 'Impact Team' have threatened to publish names, credit card details and 'secret sexual fantasies' of all members.

They believes the website wrecks marriages and have told owners they will start publishing intimate details about users unless the site, known as the 'Google of cheating', is shut down.

Impact Team say Ashley Madison members should not have anonymity because they are 'cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion.' 

One British user, called Natalie, is one of the 1.2million scared her husband will discover her infidelity.

She says that she started using the site during a 'rocky patch' in her marriage, but has not logged since 2011.

She told The Sun: 'Things with my husband improved and I haven't logged in to the website in years. Now I feel sick to my stomach that my past could come back to haunt me'. 

Experts have warned the stolen data could be sold on to criminal gangs or used to blackmail members.

The cyber criminals have already published a small amount of the information online, and say they will continue divulging the secrets of Ashley Madison’s would-be adulterers until the service is closed for good.

The hackers have claimed that even cheaters who have paid Ashley Madison to delete their information from its files are at risk. 

Ashley Madison believe the hacker may have been helped by an insider. 

The anti-affair group said in a statement: '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 website charges members £12 for what it claims is a ‘full delete’. However, the hackers said this service was 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 said.

Avid Life Media, the firm behind Ashley Madison, admitted yesterday that there had been an ‘unprovoked and criminal intrusion’ but did not confirm how much data had been stolen.

Independent security expert Brian Krebs said the information that has already been published appears to be genuine. 

The security breach is bad news for Ashley Madison, which has been battling to gain respectability after it was dubbed the ‘Google of cheating’. 

It even hoped to float on the London Stock Exchange later this year.

(Daily Mail)