Don't Gloat About Ashley Madison Leak

[IIOY]

Amid reports that hackers apparently had posted online the personal and financial information for up to 40 million members of the infidelities-R-us Web site Ashley Madison, some Americans responded Tuesday night with a shrug.



Just as many, however, responded with a smirk.



Call it schadenfreude. Or, to use the parlance of our high-tech, low sympathy times, a collective lulz. But many people took to Twitter to express their amusement at what seemed to them like poetic justice.



“Who knew paying money to cheat on your spouse had consequences? #AshleyMadison,” one person tweeted sarcastically.



“Sometimes hackers can actually do a lot of good for society,” wrote another.



“All the Ashley Madison users who got their data put out in the open deserved it lol,” added a third, alongside a smiley face.



Many poked fun at the relationship troubles sure to be unleashed by unmasking users of the popular “have an affair” Web site.



“Uh oh some folks are in trouble LOL,” one man tweeted.



“God I wish I’d become a divorce lawyer,” added a second.



“Lol. We’re going to need bigger courthouse,” tweeted Andrew H. Scott, the mayor of Coal Run, Ky.





Nobody gloated more, however, than the hackers themselves.



“Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison and Established Men,” the Impact Team wrote in a statement accompanying the alleged leak, according to Wired. “We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data. Find someone you know in here? Keep in mind the site is a scam with thousands of fake female profiles. See ashley madison fake profile lawsuit; 90-95% of actual users are male. Chances are your man signed up on the world’s biggest affair site, but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters.



“Find yourself in here? It was ALM that failed you and lied to you. Prosecute them and claim damages. Then move on with your life. Learn your lesson and make amends. Embarrassing now, but you’ll get over it.”


Although some security experts cast doubt on the authenticity of the 9.7-gigabyte leak, most said it looked legit. Brian Krebs, the security expert who writes KrebsonSecurity, was skeptical at first but then reported late last night that he had spoken with “three vouched sources who have all reported finding their information and last four digits of their credit card numbers in the leaked database…. I’m sure there are millions of AshleyMadison users who wish it weren’t so, but there is every indication this dump is the real deal.”



Assuming it is, Tuesday’s mega-doxing appears to fulfill the threat issued in July, when the Impact Team first claimed that it had hacked Ashley Madison and said it would publish its customers’ records unless the company “permanently” took down its Web site.


But before you celebrate your comeuppance over less ethical friends and colleagues, consider this: The Ashley Madison leak is about a lot more than the public shaming of philanderers.



Above all, it’s about Internet privacy.



Within minutes of the alleged leak, people began combing the data for information and posting their findings. Journalists and security experts quickly noted that there were 15,000 .mil or .gov e-mail addresses among those used for the site.



Under military rules, philanderers can be punished by a year in confinement and a dishonorable discharge, which means losing their pension, Slate reported.



“I wonder how many military retirements will be dropped tomorrow,” one person wrote on Twitter. “It certainly be an interesting few weeks.”



One Ashley Madison customer apparently used former British prime minister Tony Blair’s work e-mail to set up their seeking-sex account. (Ashley Madison does not verify the e-mail addresses, meaning anyone could have used Blair’s e-mail, Wired pointed out.)



But the Internet soon turned its ire on other suspected Ashley Madison members, such as university professors and other “SJWs,” a derogatory acronym for “social justice warriors,” or people who speak out publicly against discrimination.





Computer security expert Graham Cluley quickly warned against such witch hunts on his blog.



“For one thing, being a member of a dating site, even a somewhat seedy one like Ashley Madison, is no evidence that you have cheated on your partner,” he wrote. “You might have joined the site years before when you were single and be shocked that they still have your details in their database, or you might have joined the site out of curiosity or for a laugh … never seriously planning to take things any further.”




You might be a journalist who joined to write about Ashley Madison, for example. Or, as some self-described Ashley Madison users have said on Reddit, you may be in an open marriage.



“But more importantly than all of that, if your e-mail address is in the Ashley Madison database it means nothing,” Cluley wrote. “The owner of that e-mail address may never have even visited the Ashley Madison site.”





Cluley also wrote recently about the real risk that a leak could lead to suicide.



“What the howling wolves doesn’t seem to understand is what they are doing is online bullying. The kind of bullying that clearly can cause such personal tragedies,” he wrote.



“‘If they are cheating, they deserve it,’ the wolves reply. While I totally disagree with that argument, let me add that their kids do not deserve to lose a parent. Their family doesn’t deserve to lose a loved one. And that also applies to friends, colleagues, neighbors and others. If you are found to have bullied somebody into suicide however … I believe you deserve jailtime for that.”



And then there is another concern: that although the leak itself appears to be a moral vendetta, it could lead to individual cases of blackmail as people comb through the information and spot co-workers, neighbors or acquaintances.



By the time you read this, there is a good chance someone on 4chan will have figured out a way to make the leaked info searchable.



Amid the gloating on Tuesday night, a few people recognized the Ashley Madison leak as something much bigger than a chance to snicker: a turning point for American society, the Internet and maybe even marriage itself.





In 2012, writer Jon Methven imagined just this type of tectonic Internet shift in his short story, “Life After A Total Hack.” Methven’s fictional tale began with a woman agonizing over the chance her husband could learn about her online sexual fantasies, but quickly broadened. Widespread hacking would render much of the Internet itself useless, Methven’s story suggested.



“Molly missed her online communities: Facebook, SoundCloud, MyLife, Goodreads (though she hated to read), Twitter, Google+, Meetup, Foursquare, Pinterest, CafeMom (even though she did not like children), StumbleUpon, Flickr and LinkedIn, all of which she used to visit daily,” he wrote. “When the hack occurred, she was nervous about visiting any of the sites lest more of her personal life get leaked online.”





Journalist Chris Hayes took to Twitter to similarly suggest that if Ashley Madison could be hacked, so could many other things we might not feel nearly as smug about.





Perhaps the best and broadest take on #AshleyMadison-gate came from The Awl’s John Herrman.



“I’m not sure anyone is really reckoning with how big this could be, yet,” he wrote. “If the data becomes as public and available as seems likely right now, we’re talking about tens of millions of people who will be publicly confronted with choices they thought they made in private. The result won’t just be getting caught, it will be getting caught in an incredibly visible way that could conceivably follow victims around the internet for years.”



Herrman wondered how media organizations would treat the leak, for example. Is it news for a politician to have an affair? What about a police chief? And what about your kid’s kindergarten teacher?



And what would a flood of divorces mean for marriage, an institution already on the wane in America?



“I may be overestimating how far things will unfold, but this feels like a momentous event,” he wrote. “It’s easy to kid about the fact that these people were using a site intended to help them cheat. But if understood in more abstract terms, this hack has the potential to alter anyone’s relationship with the devices and apps and services they use every day,” Herrman argued.



“Here were tens of millions of people expecting the highest level of privacy that the commercial web could offer as they conducted business they likely wanted to keep between two people. This hack could be ruinous — personally, professionally, financially — for them and their families. But for everyone else, it could haunt every email, private message, text and transaction across an internet where privacy has been taken for granted.”



In other words, the Ashley Madison leak is about a lot more than infidelity. And the information the Impact Team just unleashed onto the Internet is more than an amusing sex scandal.



It might be Pandora’s box.


link

[jeaniebueller]

Are they trying to mansplain this?

[IIOY]

Aug 20, 2015 7:20:56 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Are they trying to mansplain this?

What do you mean?  I think this piece has some eyebrow-raising hyperbole, but I've been pissed about the security implications from the start.  If this had been, say, an online version of Alcoholics Anonymous, we'd all be enraged about the invasion of privacy and lack of security.

[josieposy]

Didn't this whole thing happen because AM was being paid for a service it was actually providing? It wasn't even about the members themselves.

[jeaniebueller]

Aug 20, 2015 7:30:48 GMT -5 IIOY said:

Aug 20, 2015 7:20:56 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Are they trying to mansplain this?

What do you mean?  I think this piece has some eyebrow-raising hyperbole, but I've been pissed about the security implications from the start.  If this had been, say, an online version of Alcoholics Anonymous, we'd all be enraged about the invasion of privacy and lack of security.

I get the privacy implications and how troubling that is, but this passage is really annoying to me:

In 2012, writer Jon Methven imagined just this type of tectonic Internet shift in his short story, “Life After A Total Hack.” Methven’s fictional tale began with a woman agonizing over the chance her husband could learn about her online sexual fantasies, but quickly broadened. Widespread hacking would render much of the Internet itself useless, Methven’s story suggested.



“Molly missed her online communities: Facebook, SoundCloud, MyLife, Goodreads (though she hated to read), Twitter, Google+, Meetup, Foursquare, Pinterest, CafeMom (even though she did not like children), StumbleUpon, Flickr and LinkedIn, all of which she used to visit daily,” he wrote. “When the hack occurred, she was nervous about visiting any of the sites lest more of her personal life get leaked online.”

[IIOY]

Aug 20, 2015 7:33:43 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Aug 20, 2015 7:30:48 GMT -5 IIOY said:

What do you mean?  I think this piece has some eyebrow-raising hyperbole, but I've been pissed about the security implications from the start.  If this had been, say, an online version of Alcoholics Anonymous, we'd all be enraged about the invasion of privacy and lack of security.

I get the privacy implications and how troubling that is, but this passage is really annoying to me:

In 2012, writer Jon Methven imagined just this type of tectonic Internet shift in his short story, “Life After A Total Hack.” Methven’s fictional tale began with a woman agonizing over the chance her husband could learn about her online sexual fantasies, but quickly broadened. Widespread hacking would render much of the Internet itself useless, Methven’s story suggested.



“Molly missed her online communities: Facebook, SoundCloud, MyLife, Goodreads (though she hated to read), Twitter, Google+, Meetup, Foursquare, Pinterest, CafeMom (even though she did not like children), StumbleUpon, Flickr and LinkedIn, all of which she used to visit daily,” he wrote. “When the hack occurred, she was nervous about visiting any of the sites lest more of her personal life get leaked online.”

Oh god, yeah, I rolled my eyes at that part and decided it was just some terrible writing from someone who aspired to do after-school specials.

[IIOY]

Aug 20, 2015 7:32:03 GMT -5 josieposy said:

Didn't this whole thing happen because AM was being paid for a service it was actually providing? It wasn't even about the members themselves.

Yes.  

I actually think the cause was noble.  AM was selling a service that it wasn't delivering.  The problem is that the very people being white-knighted by the hackers are the ones who wound up being harmed here.

[josieposy]

Aug 20, 2015 7:38:03 GMT -5 IIOY said:

Aug 20, 2015 7:32:03 GMT -5 josieposy said:

Didn't this whole thing happen because AM was being paid for a service it was actually providing? It wasn't even about the members themselves.

Yes.  

I actually think the cause was noble.  AM was selling a service that it wasn't delivering.  The problem is that the very people being white-knighted by the hackers are the ones who wound up being harmed here.

Absolutely. I mean I am gleeful over the Duggar thing, but the privacy fears are very valid.

What amazes me is that AM appears to be just hiding in the background letting everyone else fight. Nobody has really noticed that it was the company's fault in the first place and taken them to task for it, mostly because we're all too busy watching Mean Girls play out.

The only winner here is Target, because for once this one isn't their problem!

[Deleted]

I'm having a really hard time looking at this hack objectively, as I'm sure many other people are too.

On the one hand, I completely agree that this is a wake up call about how very little of what we do online is actually private. People have every reason to re-evaluate their online activity and take a close look at what they're doing in "secret" because it's never really completely private.

On the other hand, they signed up for a website that was created to help people cheat. The percent of users who are in an open relationship is likely very low and they don't have anything to worry about. The vast majority of users were on there for the stated purpose.

I want to defend peoples' privacy, but I can't help but think this is karma.

[Velar Fricative]

I am concerned enough about user privacy but I'm especially concerned with the fact that now, the dirty secrets of families are exposed. The spouses and children don't deserve this. I imagine it's hard enough discovering PRIVATELY that your spouse has been cheating, but this? I don't like this at all.

[josieposy]

Aug 20, 2015 7:54:24 GMT -5 kevin arnold said:

Aug 20, 2015 7:43:05 GMT -5 josieposy said:

What amazes me is that AM appears to be just hiding in the background letting everyone else fight. Nobody has really noticed that it was the company's fault in the first place and taken them to task for it, mostly because we're all too busy watching Mean Girls play out.

They're just waiting for the lawsuits.

I wonder if they had an arbitration agreement?

[KateAggie]

Aug 20, 2015 7:43:58 GMT -5 @silver said:

I'm having a really hard time looking at this hack objectively, as I'm sure many other people are too.

On the one hand, I completely agree that this is a wake up call about how very little of what we do online is actually private. People have every reason to re-evaluate their online activity and take a close look at what they're doing in "secret" because it's never really completely private.

On the other hand, they signed up for a website that was created to help people cheat. The percent of users who are in an open relationship is likely very low and they don't have anything to worry about. The vast majority of users were on there for the stated purpose.

I want to defend peoples' privacy, but I can't help but think this is karma.

My first reaction was "hahahahahaha!" But the more that comes out... I mean, Tony Blair is on there, and everyone assumes that's a fake account. But when emails aren't verified, who's to say which emails are actually real? People are finding not only spouses, but inlaws, friends, etc. on there. This is going to change all sorts of relationships, with no real way to find out which people have actual accounts.

[AJL]

Other than the Josh Dugger exposure, I honestly don't think it's a karma or comeuppence thing. However, I honestly do not care if someone is cheating on their spouse. That is their business and their problem. Adultery is shitty but it's not a crime and if someone is being cheating on by their spouse, why the fuck should I care. (And before someone says, "What if it was YOUR husband who is cheating?", well then I guess that sucks for me but that still doesn't mean I give a shit if my neighbor or kid's teacher or mailman is cheating on his or her partner.)

I do have a problem with the greater implications of such a breach of privacy. I also have a real problem with companies taking money from customers and failing to deliver a product. That's fraud.

I think this piece brings up some good points and I agree with a lot of them.

[pixy0stix]

Aug 20, 2015 8:01:10 GMT -5 @dontcallmeshirley1 said:

Aug 20, 2015 7:57:49 GMT -5 kevin arnold said:

The hacker's main reason for the hack was that the site was a scam. AM promised their members complete privacy (for a fee, of course) but did not have the security measures in place to back up that claim. It was all a scam.

I get that. From what I've read elsewhere, that shit WAS a scam (was? Is? I imagine them going bankrupt very soon with all of the impending legal battles). The way they went about it just seems very over the top and Batman villain-y to me. 

Any time anything is exposed, there's going to be outcry about the way it was done. That's just the nature of the world. If they had just approached the company with a, "Hey, we know you're not destroying the information like you said you were. Fix it." Would the company have complied? No. If they were taken to court (which LOL that hackers would appear in court), they might have lost. So their recourse was this. Was it overkill? Absolutely. However I don't know how else it might have played out. AM played chicken and lost.

[pixy0stix]

Aug 20, 2015 8:41:03 GMT -5 deej said:

So much of our lives are online these days, and it makes me nervous that no company is as secure as they say.

Including the government, which is the endgame in all this it feels like.

[Deleted]

Aug 20, 2015 8:16:47 GMT -5 KateAggie said:

Aug 20, 2015 7:43:58 GMT -5 @silver said:

I'm having a really hard time looking at this hack objectively, as I'm sure many other people are too.

On the one hand, I completely agree that this is a wake up call about how very little of what we do online is actually private. People have every reason to re-evaluate their online activity and take a close look at what they're doing in "secret" because it's never really completely private.

On the other hand, they signed up for a website that was created to help people cheat. The percent of users who are in an open relationship is likely very low and they don't have anything to worry about. The vast majority of users were on there for the stated purpose.

I want to defend peoples' privacy, but I can't help but think this is karma.

My first reaction was "hahahahahaha!" But the more that comes out... I mean, Tony Blair is on there, and everyone assumes that's a fake account. But when emails aren't verified, who's to say which emails are actually real? People are finding not only spouses, but inlaws, friends, etc. on there. This is going to change all sorts of relationships, with no real way to find out which people have actual accounts.

The fact that unverified email addresses were released is definitely a problem.  There are emails on there that may have been created by someone as a fake but was actually used by someone else.  Without having all of the information, no one should act on anything, but you know that's not how this is going to go.

This is another issue I'm having and one of the reasons I'm trying to remind myself it's a bad thing.  For every Josh Duggar (which we can all agree is real) there are hundreds if not thousands of other people who may end up falsely accused because incomplete and unverified information was released.

I'm also reminding myself often that it's easy for me to sit here and think it's social justice because I didn't see anyone I knew during my initial quick check.

[heyjude]

On the one hand cheaters lie with dogs and they come up with flees so here is my tiny violin on the other hand this really sucks for the 34 M spouses and families who are presumably about to find out in such a brutal way. There are no winners here. Everyone is a loser.

[pixy0stix]

So. Here's the thing about the hack that I keep coming back to: It all boils down to personal responsibility. The people who signed up knew what kind of site they were signing up for. Even if they signed up when they were single, they were still signing up hoping to have an affair with a married person. There was *always* a risk that they would get caught. It's not like going to Target and using your credit card in a secure transaction.

Yes, there are people who signed up just because they were curious. That's $$ to satisfy your curiosity about a site that you absolutely know what the end result is supposed to be.

[heyjude]

I do also find the hypocracy behind the respone to gawker when they did this and the response to AM to be interesting. I'm not talking about here necessarily, just society at large.

[AJL]

Aug 20, 2015 8:50:10 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

So. Here's the thing about the hack that I keep coming back to: It all boils down to personal responsibility. The people who signed up knew what kind of site they were signing up for. Even if they signed up when they were single, they were still signing up hoping to have an affair with a married person. There was *always* a risk that they would get caught. It's not like going to Target and using your credit card in a secure transaction.

Yes, there are people who signed up just because they were curious. That's $$ to satisfy your curiosity about a site that you absolutely know what the end result is supposed to be.

So their personal data is up for grabs? Yeah, I don't buy it.  

[pixy0stix]

Aug 20, 2015 8:53:42 GMT -5 AJL said:

Aug 20, 2015 8:50:10 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

So. Here's the thing about the hack that I keep coming back to: It all boils down to personal responsibility. The people who signed up knew what kind of site they were signing up for. Even if they signed up when they were single, they were still signing up hoping to have an affair with a married person. There was *always* a risk that they would get caught. It's not like going to Target and using your credit card in a secure transaction.

Yes, there are people who signed up just because they were curious. That's $$ to satisfy your curiosity about a site that you absolutely know what the end result is supposed to be.

So their personal data is up for grabs? Yeah, I don't buy it.  

Two different issues. One is the tech issue, and one is the societal issue. I was responding to the societal issue.

[asdfjkl]

What do men clutch instead of pearls?  Whatever it is, that's what this dude is clutching.  There are certain categories of people I feel sympathy for in light of this hack: children; people whose email addresses were used for unverified accounts; someone who maybe peaked in at "the dark side" like 6 years ago and decided "nope, not going there" and now their marriage is weaker for it.  

But the overwhelming lesson here is old SIPPAHAP's (or whatever's) "Play stupid games; win stupid prizes."  Oh, so you thought you could literally purchase infidelity ON THE INTERNET WITH A CREDIT CARD and that would all work out.  Hmm... turns out not.  

I also just want to take a minute of silence here for the state of male/female courtship.  If there is ANY lesson to be learned from the AM hack, it is that 40 years post womens-lib; after years and years of pop-culture gender-specific psychology; mainstreamed counseling; men's movements; entire book store sections on communication between men and women... men STILL don't have any. fucking. clue. what women find attractive and sexy in a mate OR what men themselves can realistically attain in a mate.  

I mean, some of these profiles are like, "Well-endowed 53 year old Yankee's fan looking for 18-25 y.o. woman for adventurous sexcapades.  No strings attached.  Must like BJs.  Must be athletic 105-115 lbs, with large breasts."  You know what, [e-mail], you need to take your middle-american average self and go back to your wife because no one gives a shit about your Yankees pennant collection and a 5.5 inch dick is not well-endowed.  

[Deleted]

Most people are probably on there out of curiosity and because it is titilating. Fantasy just like porn. Bored. Glass houses and all.

[asdfjkl]

Aug 20, 2015 9:03:01 GMT -5 kevin arnold said:

Does anyone here know if the people who claim they signed up just out of curiosity about the site itself actually have to pay? Or was there some level of free membership? Not every name/email in the data dump contained credit card info, correct?

My understanding is that there is a "free" membership, that lets you "peruse".   But if you want to make contact with a member or post a profile of yourself, you're going to have to throw down a CC with a name attached to it.  I could be wrong though.  I was reading about that issue this morning and that's what I understood from it.  You have to pay to play, but not to look.

[tacosforlife]

Aug 20, 2015 9:05:59 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

What do men clutch instead of pearls?  Whatever it is, that's what this dude is clutching.  There are certain categories of people I feel sympathy for in light of this hack: children; people whose email addresses were used for unverified accounts; someone who maybe peaked in at "the dark side" like 6 years ago and decided "nope, not going there" and now their marriage is weaker for it.  

But the overwhelming lesson here is old SIPPAHAP's (or whatever's) "Play stupid games; win stupid prizes."  Oh, so you thought you could literally purchase infidelity ON THE INTERNET WITH A CREDIT CARD and that would all work out.  Hmm... turns out not.  

I also just want to take a minute of silence here for the state of male/female courtship.  If there is ANY lesson to be learned from the AM hack, it is that 40 years post womens-lib; after years and years of pop-culture gender-specific psychology; mainstreamed counseling; men's movements; entire book store sections on communication between men and women... men STILL don't have any. fucking. clue. what women find attractive and sexy in a mate OR what men themselves can realistically attain in a mate.  

I mean, some of these profiles are like, "Well-endowed 53 year old Yankee's fan looking for 18-25 y.o. woman for adventurous sexcapades.  No strings attached.  Must like BJs.  Must be athletic 105-115 lbs, with large breasts."  You know what, [e-mail], you need to take your middle-american average self and go back to your wife because no one gives a shit about your Yankees pennant collection and a 5.5 inch dick is not well-endowed.  

I have missed you so.

[theoriginalbean]

Have any of you read "So You've Been Publicly Shamed?" I feel like the internet has turned us into mob and pitchfork and public whippings, all over again, which is what the book talks about. I'm sad for the kids and spouses who have to go through this in such a public manner (I say that as my dad cheated on my mom with her BFF, and I went to school with HER kids, and had to deal with whispers and rumors, it effing sucks).

I'm greatly disturbed by the lack of data security. I don't know what the answer is. I'm a HIPAA security officer person and data is my thing, so I don't like the relative ease with which things like this have been happening.

[msmerymac]

Yeah, as much schadenfreude as I feel over Josh Duggar, I really can't say that it's anyone's business who is on AM. While using your work email is stupid (and likely a misuse of company resources), I don't think that people should lose their jobs or reputation over having once signed up for AM. Either as "research," for fun, at a low point in your relationship, or because you are a cheater cheater pumpkin eater. That's your personal business. Aside from myself and my spouse, it affects me not at all if anyone else is actually on that site, having affairs.

[msmerymac]

Aug 20, 2015 9:19:16 GMT -5 theoriginalbean said:

Have any of you read "So You've Been Publicly Shamed?" I feel like the internet has turned us into mob and pitchfork and public whippings, all over again, which is what the book talks about. I'm sad for the kids and spouses who have to go through this in such a public manner (I say that as my dad cheated on my mom with her BFF, and I went to school with HER kids, and had to deal with whispers and rumors, it effing sucks).

I'm greatly disturbed by the lack of data security. I don't know what the answer is. I'm a HIPAA security officer person and data is my thing, so I don't like the relative ease with which things like this have been happening.

I JUST finished that a few days ago. It was really good! Very sympathetic towards the people who had their lives ruined (inevitably jobs or careers lost) because of poor decisions that became public, often something momentary, like a twitter or FB post. 

[jeaniebueller]

Aug 20, 2015 9:19:16 GMT -5 theoriginalbean said:

Have any of you read "So You've Been Publicly Shamed?" I feel like the internet has turned us into mob and pitchfork and public whippings, all over again, which is what the book talks about. I'm sad for the kids and spouses who have to go through this in such a public manner (I say that as my dad cheated on my mom with her BFF, and I went to school with HER kids, and had to deal with whispers and rumors, it effing sucks).

I'm greatly disturbed by the lack of data security. I don't know what the answer is. I'm a HIPAA security officer person and data is my thing, so I don't like the relative ease with which things like this have been happening.

Are people IRL talking about this data leak? I haven't heard anything about it except on these boards.

[Velar Fricative]

Aug 20, 2015 9:19:16 GMT -5 theoriginalbean said:

Have any of you read "So You've Been Publicly Shamed?" I feel like the internet has turned us into mob and pitchfork and public whippings, all over again, which is what the book talks about. I'm sad for the kids and spouses who have to go through this in such a public manner (I say that as my dad cheated on my mom with her BFF, and I went to school with HER kids, and had to deal with whispers and rumors, it effing sucks).

I'm greatly disturbed by the lack of data security. I don't know what the answer is. I'm a HIPAA security officer person and data is my thing, so I don't like the relative ease with which things like this have been happening.

I haven't read the book but there was a great article posted here (I'll see if I can find out) that had interviews with people who were shamed on the internet and the fallout in their lives from that. Here's the thread:

pandce.proboards.com/thread/419720/fallout-internet-shaming

I go back and forth on this a lot. Shitty people suck. I don't want them to be able to go the rest of their lives making vile comments towards people, preaching hate, etc. without anyone calling them out for it. But on the internet, it's not enough to just tweet back that someone made asshole comments. You have to find their address, call their employer, and make death threats too. While some of the incidents (like #hasjustinelandedyet) were trainwrecks that you just couldn't look away from...after things die down you realize, man, you have to pay for a stupid comment for a long time after it's over, even if you've had a change of heart and realize what you said was wrong.