Cybersecurity
Adultery Site Ashley Madison Fined Over Client Data Breach
- Parent Ruby Corp.’s settlement reduced for ‘inability to pay’
- FTC, 13 states probed 2015 breach exposing 37 million users
The Ashley Madison website.
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Adultery website AshleyMadison.com’s owner agreed to pay a steeply discounted $1.65 million settlement to resolve state and federal probes into a 2015 hack that exposed personal data of 37 million users of the site, whose slogan was “Life is Short. Have an Affair.”
The company, which changed its name to Ruby Corp. from Avid Life Media Inc. after the breach, agreed to a $17.5 million penalty to resolve the multistate investigation, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement. The amount was reduced by about 90 percent due to an "inability to pay," and the rest was suspended.