Cheating website to pay $1.6 million to end nasty affair

Washington: The operators of the Ashley Madison affair-minded dating website agreed on Wednesday to pay a $1.6 million penalty over a data breach exposing data from 36 million users, US officials announced.

Ashley Madison’s Canadian parent company Ruby agreed to the penalty to settle charges with the US Federal Trade Commission and state regulators for failing to protect confidential user information.

The settlement comes after a hacker group last year released what was said to be personal data on millions of members of Ashley Madison, who were based in 46 countries. The fallout led to reports of blackmail and even suicides.

The financial penalty, split between the federal government and US states suing the company, would increase to $8.75 million to the FTC plus $8.75 million to states if Ashley Madison fails to abide by new information security practices and refrain from misleading consumers.

“This case represents one of the largest data breaches that the FTC has investigated to date, implicating 36 million individuals worldwide,” said FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez. “We want them (the company) to feel the pain, we don’t want them to profit from unlawful conduct.”

The dating website’s motto had been “life is short, have an affair”.

According to the FTC complaint, until August 2014, operators of the site lured customers, including 19 million Americans, with fake profiles of women designed to convert them into paid members. The company failed to protect users’ personal information such as date of birth and relationship status.