The Golden Cow?
Milking this AM situation/fiasco for all it is worth?
Mentionning no names or organisations.
A Reg reader named Dave*, who admits to having been a member of Ashley Madison, has sent us the letter he received from blackmailers. Dave was in the early stages of a divorce when he signed up and “was separated … never paid, only looked at single women while deciding whether to pay to contact them, so zero fucks given.” The …
True. No one would ever suspect the motives behind or security of a system that suddenly sends emails out to a very large number of addresses! :)
(That said, I do believe it to be a good idea - but maybe some work from a few people/organisations to share the load - and perhaps Google, MS, all ISPs etc could email their own users who appear on the list - although that said those emails could also cause issues - say I was on AM and forgot about it and am since married or....)
Wow. A useful addition to my literature awareness, thanks. No I haven't read ALL of Kipling, so I missed that. But a Google seach (re)introduced me to such colourful names as Æthelred the Unready and Sigeric the Serious.
Andus the Sheepsh***er pales into insignificance against those (I wish!)
Probably works better on those who are "happily" married and have a spouse, children, and in-laws who would not be pleased to learn they were looking for a little something extra outside the marriage. Not that that's uncommon, but why go to a site like this one that promises anonymity unless you were worried about people finding out?
What I wonder about is why 1.05 bitcoins? Why not exactly one bitcoin? I guess he targeted a specific amount in his currency of choice and that's what it worked out to be? He may have left a clue as to his nationality if you check popular currencies like USD, Euro, pound, ruble, etc. and see which one would have had a nice round number like 100 or 500 or whatever for 1.05 bitcoins the day before that was sent.
The odd fraction is different for every customer which helps to identify which customers have paid up.
Of course someone who was even more unscrupulous would just find married men on Facebook and tell them that they are going to tell their friends and family that they have been found on the AM website. This would save the time of having to download the whole database of data which in many cases also gets lots of malware.
The odd fraction is different for every customer which helps to identify which customers have paid up.
Not according to the previous story. They used a unique address for each "customer" (as is the normal practice with bitcoin payments) so there would be no need for the amounts to be unique. Not to mention it sounds like they were bluffing and so didn't need to keep track of who paid anyway.
Good for him. I would actively try to contact the blackmailer and tell them to go ahead because I don't care. I would add an nice f-off as well. So trying to blackmail someone who is single who is looking for some broad to bang only proves one thing: That someone is human.
Big deal.
NEXT!
"Good for him. I would actively try to contact the blackmailer and tell them to go ahead because I don't care."
The worst thing you can possibly do, because he has now confirmed your email address is real.
You have to assume that thousands of these things are being cranked out by a bot and a human being is looking out for the responses. If you don't answer, chances are you will be ignored because he's going after the ones stupid enough to respond.
I did read the article and headline, however, conditioning by all of the horror stories and a few drinks made me just repeat 'Dave's' conclusion, one cannot also help but wonder if 'Dave's' story is the whole.
Perhaps the same thinking that led him to sign up for Madison in reaction was behind the start of the nasty divorce or if the sign-up or similar behaviour was a pre-existing thing and part of a pattern leading to the divorce?
Perhaps the same thinking that led him to sign up for Madison in reaction was behind the start of the nasty divorce or if the sign-up or similar behaviour was a pre-existing thing and part of a pattern leading to the divorce?
Quite frankly, I can't see that it's any of your damn business, and speculation about "Dave's" reasons for either his divorce or signing up to AM are not something that should be aired and discussed on this forum.
The story was published to show the sort of blackmail methods and threats that certain scumbuckets have tried to use on those who appear in the database.
The morality or otherwise of using sites like AM is besides the point.
“You may be wondering why should you and what will prevent other people from doing the same, in short you now know to change your privacy settings on Facebook so no one can view your friends/family list. So go ahead and update that now (I have a copy if you don't pay) to stop any future e-mails like this.”
All we have to do is make everyone's Facebook information public, and then the blackmail won't work!
When this story was first published, back in July, & I read that no email addresses were verified, I did wonder what would stop the spam merchants from grabbing a pile of email addresses, sending out something similar, on a random basis & seeing what came of it.
Possibly more than has been collected to date?
Whoever it is, given the lag between the database dumps becoming available and these emails going out, I'd say they're not used to shredding and ingesting something like this. [ETL of a particular kind.] It's not really that difficult, usually involves trial and a lot of error if never done before. I smell an opportunist, not a "hacker."
<snip off quoted court case that never was>
"But then I am a firm believer that if you can't tell your wife about it then you probably shouldn't be doing it."
Tell her when making love that her sistser is better at it than she. You will have to hang on but you will have the ride of your life.
I actually agree, my wife once told me I was brutally honest.
I have brought it to my employers attention that you are misusing the internet, for monetary gain.
While my employer has allowed many companies to continue in a similar manner, it is on the understanding that Uncle Sam gets some tax dollars and or some useful intelligence.
Your venture appears to do neither and as such will be flagged up and passed to several of my colleagues who will pursue your maligned arse to the ends of your router connection.
While the courts take a very dim view of such activities, my colleagues and I take it very personally indeed.
You have ten days to put your life in order and say goodbye to any loved ones.
Bob Crockshit (Not my real name)
Chief intelligence officer
NSA
The entire World (and beyond if necessary)
My response, if I were bothered to give one, would be more along the lines of:
Dear Blackmailer,
Having received your demand for X amount of bitcoin I would like to inform you that I would consider it a more sound investment, to spend 5 times as much hiring a hacker to hunt you down, and a hitman to torch your house and rape your wife and kill your kids while you watch before gouging your eyes out with a blunt butter knife and skinning you alive with a rusty razor blade soaked in sulphuric acid, before posting the resulting video to YouTube as a warning to other blackmailers and scammers that stealing from me doesn't lead to a happy ending.
Kind regards,
Ramsay Bolton,
Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North.