The CEO of Avid Life Media, the parent site of Ashley Madison, a website that facilitates extramarital affairs, has stepped down.
Noel Biderman has formally resigned from the company following a huge hack that saw details of nearly 40 million Ashley Madison users exposed on the web.
The company announced the move in a statement today:
“Effective today,
Hacking group The Impact Team posted the personal information of the website’s users back on August 19.
The haul featured customer logins, account details, encrypted passwords, credit card details and transactions, as well as biographies and detailed descriptions of what members were looking for from Ashley Madison.
This exposure led to divorce proceedings in the UK, and even a handful of suicides.
The Impact Team claimed Ashley Madison was “like a drug dealer abusing addicts”, and that the website’s privacy infrastructure was “bad”.
“Nobody was watching,” explained the group in an interview earlier this month. “No security.”
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According to ALM, the departure of Biderman “is in the best interest of the company”, and the firm will “continue to provide support” to members and employees.
“We are actively adjusting to the attack on our business and members’ privacy by criminals. We will continue to provide access to our unique platforms for our worldwide members,” reads ALM’s statement.
It continues: “We are actively cooperating with international law enforcement in an effort to bring those responsible for the theft of proprietary member and business information to justice.”
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.