As the fallout from last week’s leak of information about more than 30 million members of cheating website Ashley Madison continues, the site’s owner, Avid Life Media, is now offering a $500,000 Canadian ($377,000 U.S.) reward for information to help catch the hackers.
Following the Toronto police’s confirmation of two suicides in connection to the data leak, Avid Life Media, which is based in Canada, told the BBC that it’s offering a reward to anyone who can offer information to help find the hackers, which call themselves “Impact Team.” The company is appealing to the hacker community especially.
Impact Team hacked and threatened to release data from Avid Life Media’s sites in July as a protest of the ethics of the sites. Ashley Madison functions as a dating site for married folks looking for an affair, and Established Men, another Avid Life Media property, does the same for young women seeking to meet rich men. The hackers also took issue with the company’s $19 feature that promises to fully delete a user’s data from the site, which the hackers said isn’t true. The leaked data proved that point.
The release of users’ emails — and therefore, identities — has understandably shaken marriages and relationships. Other hackers have also attempted to blackmail some users in exchange for payments in bitcoin.