Episode 25 - The Ashley Madison Hacking Scandal

0:15 Welcome back to Crime Besties to another episode of our podcast. How's it going, Emma? It's I've had a week. I've had a week, I think we discussed in the podcast last week, my son ended up needing surgery last week. And it's just, you know, the flow and effect of that. Oh yeah. And I don't know, it's just I'm looking forward to it being over and done with and I think he is. Too. Oh, I bet he is. I can't even imagine like being in that brace, like for this time. So as a kid who is active, I mean, he's doing well.

0:48 I absolutely love sitting next to him in assembly today. He's good entertainment. I think he was corrupting you though, because were you one of those kids at school who if you sat next to a naughty kid you were easily influenced? Maybe you know how I know that how 'cause that's literally what happened to you today at assembly. You were sitting next to Oliver and everyone's all quiet. Oliver makes some, you know, snide comment or something, and you're sitting there laughing while everyone's like, quiet I. Couldn't have we got?

1:19 I got the giggles for the long from one of them. He said it was very funny. He's a classy. I absolutely adore it. You can sit next to me at assembly anytime 'cause God, that could get boring. Well. Today's was especially long. There were so many awards, but both of our like two of our kids got awards, so that was nice to see. Yep, we'll. Take that, love it. Very, very proud mums for sure. Oh God. And then the preps gap and sing and we're all just like 2. That's too adorable. They're so cute. While we were sitting at assembly, though, I got a message from one of our friends.

1:50 And like, you've got this is this is on you, by the way. Me. Yeah, she sent me. She sent me a a Happy Friday message with a picture of the rock. Oh. I love that this is spreading. I'm so good that that's just like, you know, infiltrating other spaces now. Yeah. So thanks, Amy. I mean really that's, you know, appreciate it And. Also, I have a clip to show you just to go along with that another time too. I don't think we need to be pushing this out into the ether, but for anybody who hasn't watched our Elizabeth Holmes episode, go back and listen, because then you'll get the reference.

2:25 Yes, go the rock.

2:30 I do have a couple of shout outs as well this week because we've had, we have had so much engagement across our platforms this week. I feel like every week we're saying to people, please like and subscribe and comment and that's the best way to get our podcast out there. And we are seeing the effect of that now. So thank you guys so much. It is so, so, so much appreciated by us for getting it out there because we're getting so many more people who we don't know who are just finding our podcast and leaving really lovely reviews.

2:59 And it's so awesome, like open up a comment and see, like someone just comment and say, you know, you're my new favorite podcast or you know, and it's like we, it makes our Fridays just so worth doing this, like because it is time out of our week and you're in it. And I know that I'm we spend time doing all this, but because we love doing it. But then to get that little bit of incentive of like people like actually enjoying it. And on the other end of it, it's it's really nice. It's great. So thank you the the shout out in particular.

3:23 And I think you just actually mentioned the exact comment. It was like loving my new favorite podcast from Nico under Score 333. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. And I also caught up with a friend, a couple of friends on Monday night for dinner. And one of my friends who I haven't seen in, you know, in a few months, she has been listening and she was so lovely in saying that again, she listens every week. She takes a bit of time out for herself and listens to our podcast. So thanks, Cath I, we really appreciate the support.

3:53 I love that it's your me time like you listen to us. Yeah, I was telling Meg about how you take the potty into the sauna and have a that have a bit of a steam away from, you know, all of life's pressures and have a listen. So love. That, yeah. Love it, sorry. For that hour and a half that you're spending in the sauna, though? Don't you take a giant bottle of water in you? They're getting a bit long sometimes. Last week's episode was huge. Maria Corp that was massive. Yeah, that was that just got released.

4:21 So yeah, it won't be what you guys have just listened to, but the one that just came out this week in the week of our record now that was probably our longest yet. So thanks to everyone who got to the end of it it. Was worth it. That was worth it because yeah, there's some good stuff in there. Yeah, that's it. That's it. What else has been going on with you? Have you had any other bits and bobs happening? We're. Cruising along at the moment. It's like downhill run to Christmas now isn't it? Like getting through.

4:46 I know the kids are just exhausted and like wears off on me. Yeah, and it's a term for that school. There's so much on. Well. Literally like the, the kids were like, we're driving to school the other morning and they go to me. You know, there's a sign on the side of the road that keeps counting down on this. And it's absolutely killing me that every each week as we go past this sign, it was like this week, Oh mom, look, it's 6 Fridays to Christmas. And it's like, piss off. I can't handle. This is this why you said before that you've urgently got to do some Christmas shopping this weekend?

5:13 You're feeling the pressure. I'm running out of weekends, out of the time to do it and it's just yeah well, I mean even like the whole for school and things, there's only 5 weeks left of school that's really bothering me that I've got like next year I've got a grade 2 and a grade 4 like that whole like that they move another level along. It's just I don't like it. They should just stay in prep forever. I. Know it is so cute when they're in prep. Yeah, the attitudes just not great. Can we lose that?

5:41 That's all part of it, isn't it? It is. I last year I decided to wait for the Black Friday sales to do all of my Christmas shopping, and that was pretty bloody successful, I have to say. So yeah, OK, I'm trying the same tact this year and which so for us Black Fridays in a couple of weeks. OK, so this is I don't keep track of it I. Don't know. Well, you know what, there's all, there's bloody sales going on everywhere. And also, I didn't realize, but there was this like Singles Day. So on the 11th of the 11th, 1111, right.

6:11 I think this is also an American thing, but well, I'm not really sure. But the way I saw it, it's just another day to market. You sell, people sell to people, but it's like the single people's Valentine's Day. OK. So people buy themselves stuff I don't know. So there were sales for that, but I'm gonna, I've written my list and for the things I know, for the people I know what I'm buying for, that's great. But I find then the people you don't know what to buy for, you really do need to go to the shops and have a look around.

6:42 That or you do do online and it's the delivery like how long is it gonna take to get here in that panic? Cause I've had that happen. It gets that's closer and closer to Christmas and that that package still hasn't arrived. Yeah, that killed me one year really bad. So I'm I don't want to have that happen again. But that's why if you do Black Friday, you've got a month basically until Christmas. You should be right. I should be right in terms of delivery and then everything else I'll just go to the shops for.

7:07 But then again, so off talking about deliveries. This is hilarious. So I have quite a large dog, right? Like he's. Quite a large dog. He's the biggest bloody thing I've ever seen. So I get his food delivered to the house like once every month or six weeks, whatever. And so it comes in a 20K bag. Now I have gates at the front of my house and they close when we exit for the day. And so the delivery just gets normally put like just at the their side there just next to the gate. That's fine. It's dog food.

7:32 Who's going to steal that? And 20 kilos of it at that, Like no one's stealing it. And so that normally gets put there. This week I saw that the the doorbell gets hit, you know, and the camera comes on. I checked and like, Oh yeah, it's just the dog food thing. I need to talk to him because they'll just put it there. The next thing I look at that I had to look back at the camera because I see the guy with this 20K box of dog food looking at the gate looking and then kind of like went, I'm gonna try.

7:57 He went to try and lift it and push it over and like throw it over. Did he know what? Was in it. I assume so, yeah, because it was all like they only deliver like stuff from that, OK, that I would assume he knows that that's. What? He said. It's not breakable or something. But at the same time, I'm like, that's 20 kilos. You're fully gonna shot put over the the the gate. And it's a tall gate. Yeah, yeah, he did back out, thank God, because I'm like. But then did he leave it about him? He did, yeah.

8:23 OK, because that that would be annoying if he didn't. That was even. Worry that I was like, then yeah, don't freaking drive off again like that. Don't let me go to the post. Office to pick that up? Yeah, that's annoying. Who, what, what planet are you on thinking you're gonna throw that over the. Fence Oh, he was just trying to do the right thing I. Find they do some interesting things at my place with parcels. So I do deliveries are. I don't know, it's always nerve wracking, like yeah, where's this thing gonna end up?

8:47 Yeah. 99% of time there's someone at my house, so my husband's either working from home or I'm home. And on the off chance that we're getting something like special delivered, my neighbour is often home and I can just message her and go, oh, can you quickly pick that up for me? Deliveries very. Often, though, only. Daily. I love that you had a bit of a thing going with your neighbour. Where let you can you get that stuff on my doorstep before? Yeah, before, yeah, I had this. Well, this was actually a funny story, but when we went to Bali last year and I had this like really drunken day with my mum and sister-in-law, it was so bad.

9:21 I got back from that and I dropped my phone in the pool like I it was so bad, like I it was. Yeah, that's not bad. That's that is fantastic. I had the best day. Peter took a video of me that day and I look back on that. Oh, I'll show it to. You later to chat. Oh, it's embarrassing because I was like, oh, my phone fell in the pool, but whatever. Like, you know, I need a new phone anyway. Like I just did not care about anything. But anyway, that night my phone did start working again. It all dried out and it was all fine.

9:49 And you know how I know that? Because I was drunkenly buying all this stuff, like, I don't even know, doing all this online shopping. And my neighbor messaged me and she's like, you're getting lots of packages. And I was like, am I? I don't remember ordering anything. And she took a photo of it and I was like, so look in my receipts and I'm like, oh, Yep, right, right. So just did a bit of a bit of happy shopping. Did you do good Shopping wasn't. What I you know what I really did because I did not hold back.

10:17 Oh.

10:20 Love. This I got home from my holiday and it was like Christmas had come. It was bloody brilliant. Credit card got a great work. Oh yeah. It did. It really did. Oh. That's hilarious. Anyway, Speaking of online, that actually ties into today's episode really well. Today we're talking about Ashley Madison. Yeah. So this is a really this is probably a little bit different to what, you know, all of the other cases that we've done so far, because we're not we're not talking about murder. We're not talking about.

10:54 Well, there are some deaths, There's some deaths and there's. Certainly people who are maybe culpable for that. Yeah, and some criminal activity for sure. So it definitely falls under the umbrella of crime. Yeah. But we thought, you know, we've had a few really heavy episodes lately, so we thought we'd sort of delve into something a little, a little different and change tact. So sure. And this and this particular case, like we were talking about the fact that you can sort of come at it from various angles of how you might look at this.

11:21 And I know there's some there's documentaries out there, like on the net, there's an more recent Netflix one, there's one on Disney Plus. There's been a lot of the like, that's something, there's been a lot of stories written in the media about it. Absolutely. Yeah. From very personal perspectives, from the business side of things, you know, legalities, all that. So we're kind of like intrigued to see where we've both gone at it from our research. So it'll be interesting what we could have come at.

11:43 We probably have a bit of, probably a little from everywhere. Yeah, I'd say so, yeah. So there's a few podcasts out there around about it as well, but I actually found this stuff. The documentaries were a lot more informative. Yeah. In terms of what's available podcast wise, I didn't really find that much that was any. Yeah. They sort of good value to focus very narrowly on a, a on an aspect rather than more broadly, which I think from what I think what I've I've looked at, yeah, I fairly looked at fairly broadly.

12:11 So we might tap into a few things. Yeah, you weren't aware of if you've only looked at one part of it. Yeah, hopefully. I'm hoping, I'm hoping we'll be able to bring any bit of extra information to everyone today. I was always a bit of extra information when you think I love sort of delving into a little bit of the pop culture of these sorts of things too, especially a case like this where so Ashley Madison had famously had a tagline of life is short, have an affair. And I just love that The Simpsons did a bit of a take off of this.

12:37 Have you seen it? Yes. Cracks me up. So Marge Simpson starts to think that she might have a bit of an affair and she jumps on a website named Sassy Madison with the tagline. It's not cheating if you don't know the person well. OK, that. Was, I mean, they're very, very well done in The Simpsons Sport. That was really gorgeous. Love it. Love it. Yeah. So Ashley Madison was founded in 2001 by a man named Darren Morgan, Morgan Stern. He is not the main player when you read most of what's going on, but he it was his idea and he started it.

13:20 He and his brother actually came up with the name. Ashley and Madison were the two most popular girls names in 2001 and they thought it sounded classy. Literally, that is a direct quote. They thought it sounded classy. So that's how Ashley Madison, the website got its name. What they essentially did was create a an online dating website for people who were seeking out adulterous relationships. So it was set up for meeting people who were willingly wanting an extramarital affair. Yeah, both men and.

14:00 Women, both men and women, and this was really pre like this was sort of the the starting of online dating. This was not you know, I mean, you look at today, how many apps there are you know, around dating and things like that online, there's heaps I could I mean, I don't even know half like any of them really yeah, Tinder hinder, I don't know, there's there's tons and so, but at this point, this wasn't the norm by any means. So to come up with not only a dating website, but one that has quite a niche kind of market, really what you would think of, you know, it was an.

14:31 Impressive idea it Well, I guess it's very entrepreneurial. It it was launched in the at the beginning of that.com boom when, when all when websites kind of took off. And this was this, you know, so much traffic was being directed to the Internet, whereas before that hadn't really been a thing. So they came about it at the right time. They obviously had an idea that appealed to a lot of people. And, you know, at the start, it was a little bit slow to get off the mark. But in 2004, they brought on a new CEO named Noel Vitamin I. Think 2007 he.

15:08 He came in OK, Yeah. And he really changed the landscape for Yeah, and drove the website to being what it was known as when when it all, well, even to this day, actually. Yeah. So Noel Benjamin, he graduated from Osgood Hall Law School. He began his career as a lawyer. So he represented. He was more of a sports agent. He represented NBA players, NFL, all these sorts of even some Olympians, Canadian Olympians, you know that. So that was where his bread and butter was. Can I just ask why do you think he went from being a sport agent, which I know is a really lucrative career, Yeah, to then, I don't know, taking on this role as ACEO?

15:53 Look, I can understand wanting to be a CEO of a company, that's completely fair. Yeah, But a CEO of something so salacious when you had. Well, I think it was just one of many things he was tapping into in. Business world. OK, he. He worked at companies like Into Performances Inc, Home Stores Inc, Jump TV, so he was branching out into. Right. Quite a bit of different styles of like, I think, you know, that entrepreneurial side of things, you know, and I think the marketing was really his jam. It was.

16:25 Yeah. So, so this was so he became the CEO of Avid Life Media, which was the parent company to Ashley Madison. But this guy was he's completely shameless. Like how do you? He's an absolute piece of shit. He is. He's horrible. An early quote from him. Yeah. So this quote's in relation to, like, wives gaining weight, right? Yeah. This is a direct quote. Two wives gaining weight. It's a legitimate reason for husbands to seek sex outside marriage.

17:01 Yeah, but that was that was who he was, was someone who was a walking buddy headline like, you know, and he used that to his advantage to promote Ashley get Madison. That was no change stick. What? So basically the his whole idea was that any publicity is good publicity, you know, and so it was he put up these incredibly offensive big banners, you know, that like people would. Then it wasn't the fact of putting the cost up, of putting up this, you know, billboard. It was then the talk that went on after it about taking it down.

17:36 It was so he was. It was actually at one stage he was on the Tyra Bank show. So OK love loved it. Yeah, I have seen this clip. Though, Yeah, but I mean, he put himself in that position where he was going to be, you know, treated pretty poorly, but he knew that that would create talk. So there was a guy on the Tyra Bank show whose wife had had an affair and he blamed the website. So he went on the web on that show to literally have this guy want to beat the shit out of him like you know, and so but that created more media hype and more talk, so.

18:09 And also he like hit their whole thing is people are going to cheat anyway. We've just given them a way to do it, the facility to do it that, you know, we're not creating cheaters is his his thing, which is cheaters already exist. Well, you know, access is everything, right? Yeah, if you're a drug addict and you have access to drugs, great. If you don't, maybe you're. Yeah. Yeah. So it's providing opportunity. I I see. Obviously there's a need because they had so many subscribers. We'll get into that in a minute.

18:40 Yeah. But, you know, he's still created that opportunity for people. So I mean, that's his moral compass and whatever, that's fine. So there was a guy in 2008, there was the the governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer. So he was caught paying for sex. He was, he was known as a family man, you know, all this sort of stuff. But he got caught having, buying, paying for sex, basically. So what this Noor Bateman did was he took out a full page ad in The New Yorker. And put which would have cost a bomb. Absolutely.

19:12 So he took out the full page ad and it was a letter to Elliot Spitzer saying basically, dear Elliot, why pay for sex when you could have just come onto our website and not got caught? Just the whole, the whole thing. I mean, that is genius, the whole. I know I could hear what you're saying in terms of he's a piece of. Shit, he's a piece of shit, but he's a genius moral. Compass is totally wack, yeah, but he's marketing. He's. So clever. So clever. So clever. Yeah. He he also came up with a tagline that was something along the lines of when monogamy, when monogamy becomes monotony.

19:48 Yeah. And he's like, that one didn't work because people thought we were talking about wood. Like mahogany? Well, you were talking about wood in a, you know, certain way. I love that, love it. He is, But he brought his wife into this stuff too. So his wife was on one of the billboards they put up saying like, you know, and I think it was the words were like your, your wife might be hot, but so are ours, like, and there's a picture of his wife on there, like, yeah. And then she'd go on to the interviews as.

20:19 Well, yeah, she he'd parade her around. There was some really uncomfortable stuff around that, though, because you see her sitting there next to him and they tell that they've got this absolutely perfect marriage. And we he we don't cheat. He doesn't cheat because he's got the perfect wife. And. And you can tell she's been coached within an inch of her life as to what to say in these interviews. And again, he's a marketing genius. So he's he's come up with really great, you know, great answers. And she's really well prepped.

20:47 Yeah. I find a lot of those interviews so uncomfortable to watch because, I mean, knowing what we know. And again, we will get to this. Yeah. But and she it's like he's parading her outgoing. See, see, like I'm perfect, I'm fine, but you guys can all go off there and have your little affairs and. I don't need to affair because we're so we're so everyone else who has issues in their marriage, you should have an affair. Yeah, Ashley Madison, they prided themselves sort of external facing, prided themselves on being discreet and private.

21:20 So their whole promise to the people who signed up to the website was this is secret. Yeah. Nobody will ever find out about this. Yeah. They had really funny ways of keeping it that way. So they used people would subscribe to the website. Yeah. As a male, you had to pay to engage on the website. As a female, you didn't. Great subscription model. Because you need women. Yep. And women are less likely to sign up for these things. So to incentivize them to do so for women, it's free. For men, they paid on a credit basis.

21:54 So in order to send a message on the website, yeah. So it was free to create a profile, but in order to send a message on the website, you had to buy credits. If you wanted to chat with somebody, each message you sent was worth a credit. So say you have a message conversation with somebody, that could be 50 credits, it could be 20 credits. If you wanted to have a live conversation with that person, it was double the amount of credits. Wow. So if, say we happen to be on line at the same time and we wanted to have a live chat, double the amount of credits.

22:24 Yeah. An incredible amount of money was being had. So in 2004, they had 240,000 users. Yeah, 2007, which is when Noel Biederman started. Yeah, they had about 1.2 million by 2000 and 12:15 million, yeah, by 2015. Thirty 7 million active, active users. Absolutely. And what was the what was the percent? Well, what was the percentage though that were men? It was like it was over 75%. But again. Yeah, I've got the figures here. So in 2015, there were 27.5 million males. Yeah, online and there were 4 million female members.

23:03 So you know 95% roughly were male, OK. And that 5% that were female will come to yes. So just going back a little bit to 2010 when you had had 7 million million members at this point. Yep. Another one of his tactics with his marketing was it in this at this point in time, do you remember Tiger Woods famously had an affair? Yes. And his wife, remember that's like. So he was trying to the way it sort of was exposed to the public was that he was trying to get out of his house and she was like beating the car with a Golf Club.

23:36 Yep. And he crashed his car. Yeah. And everything right was all over the news that this happened. Like I've heard about it. Absolutely. And now at this point all of like Tiger Woods sponsors and stuff were very like, oh, like, don't know if I want to go near that. Like. So he was kind of becoming this bit of a taboo to be, you know, linked to him. So what does not beat him and do goes directly to Tiger Woods and offers him $5,000,000 to be the face of Ashley Madison. Now, Tiger Woods said no to his credit, like, you know, but it wasn't the fact of even him saying yes or no to that.

24:08 The fact that it was out in the media that this was an offer that was being put to him was enough to publicize the website that Tiger Woods was doing something that you could do too. So he was some ways a marketing genius. He really was. I'm I'm not denying that at all. So 2012 the company revenue was $71 million. In 2013 they were looking at we want to increase that more. So they found a way to do that. They forgot to look at their model and what was going on. And so this is $70 million. Seventy $1 million is a massive amount of money, but how can we continue to grow this?

24:46 And as you were saying, only men paid to speak on the website to, you know, communicate on the website, but there weren't enough women on the website for them to communicate with. So this is where they came up with this idea to create these fembots. So this. Reminds me of just powers.

25:06 So these fembots would be. Little and they're like pushing gun nipples. Yeah, sorry. Sorry, childish. Sorry. Yeah. So they they created these fake female profiles to spark men to spend more money, like so that they were having these beautiful women, you know, with these profiles set up that they would then communicate to men who would then go, oh, you know, I'll talk to her and start the communication. So they were spending more credit. So by the end of 2013 there were 22,000 fembots. It's created on the.

25:39 Website So how OK I I saw figures like that right? How did that then translate when these men wanted to meet up with these? This is it for women. So we'll get to that. So in 2014, the company revenue grew using these fembots. They went from 71 mil back in 2012 to $180 million revenue in just two years by adding these fembots to the website, which is just insane. So by the time, by the time I hit we hit, we hit 2015, there are hundreds of thousands of fake female profiles. So even though as we said before, those figures were of like 95% of being male and 5% being female, even that 5% being female, what there were not many genuine possibilities of hookups basically because it was fake profiles that were communicating with these men.

26:32 I think I saw somewhere that there was something like 220,000 fembots, Yeah at any one time and they were communicating with, I mean they, they could communicate with like as many yeah men as what were engaging with them. Men were getting like in this sort. We'll move to this next bit where he What they would get was like 5 women would all of a sudden communicate with this one man with the exact same message. Yeah. So men were starting to pick out onto this on in about 2015. There was a real like this isn't right.

27:06 I'm you know this they they were. It took him a while. Like. You know, they enjoyed it for a little bit, but then realized that he's beautiful woman. So what one man did was he set up a website by the name of Madison, actually madisonsucks.com. Yeah. So and basically the website was men coming on there to complain about Ashley Madison and the experiences they were having on that website. But Ashley Madison were not happy about this at all. Like because this was this was not the any publicity is good publicity working for them model that they had.

27:42 This was genuinely people going. I wouldn't use that website. It's and. Also, they were catching them out doing something that they shouldn't have been doing. It's deceptive. It's yeah, not right. So Ashley Madison, we're not OK with this and actually initiated a lawsuit against the website. However, there's nothing illegal around having a complaints website about something that especially when they weren't, they weren't. It wasn't slander because it was truth. These were people's experiences on the website.

28:12 So it was actually nothing illegal about it. And the owner of that website then started getting quite a lot of threats via e-mail, all these things to the point where him and his then girlfriend was quite scared and they ended up moving house because they weren't feeling safe they would to that level. So the all of a sudden though, this one day, Noel Beedeman actually calls the owner of the website and he he on to his credit, he immediately hit record and recorded the message. He can actually find that recording of that phone call and listen.

28:46 And it's pretty disgusting. So no, bitumen does not. Hold back at all. He's very much like you must take this website down and this is not on you know, and he's but what he does is he's I think the owner of the website actually says to him, is it you that's been sending me these abusive messages to which no bitumen. He completely denied that then said, but if you don't take the website down, I will fucking kill you. Yep, like so you kind of like well, is it him? Quite possibly of. Course it's him.

29:15 I mean, even if it's not him personally, he's directed. He's directing someone to to do that, which we can get to. Yeah. So the basically though at the end of all of that, what happens eventually is that Ashley Madison end up purchasingashleymadisonsucks.com off of them. I think in the leak, in the data leak, this all came out and I think it was only for about 10 grand, but. Oh, I thought it was. I thought. It was not even more in the end. I thought it was something around 50 grand. Yeah, right.

29:42 So it wasn't an insignificant amount of money, but it was like it probably could have gotten him for way more. Oh, I. Would have thought, yeah. It would have. It was within their absolutely. It was within their best interest to have the website taken down. I think they would have paid way more than that. But I love. What he did, though, he didn't take it down. No, he expanded it and made it a review site. And I love how they changed the banner on it. Instead of saying Ashley Madison sucks, it was Ashley, Ashley Madison sucks.

30:07 Question mark. Yeah. And then it actually filtered out and flushed out sort of all the negative by overpowering it with positive reviews as well. So that, yeah, they didn't remove the negative ones, but that it's sort of overpowered it by these. You know what? You might have had a bad experience, but all these other people had good experiences. Again, marketing genius. It for sure. So basically at this stage also they're heading towards putting the company public as well. So there's a lot going on for Ashley Madison in terms of how well it's doing.

30:37 I think it was almost looking at being like a billion dollar company at that point. And it was yeah, yeah. So that's when they'll put it on the on the Stock Exchange. Yep. It was valued at a billion dollars. Yeah. So, I mean, that's impressive, absolutely. But July 12th when it comes along and a Monday morning on 2015 and the workers at Ashley Madison start their day and open up their laptops to find a message, I would like to read it to you. Yes, it said. We are the Impact team. We have taken over all systems in your entire office, all customers, databases, financial records, emails.

31:15 Shutting down Ashley Madison will cost you but non compliance will cost you more. We will release all customers secret sexual fantasies, nude pictures, real names, addresses. Avid Life Media will be liable for fraud and extreme harm to millions of users. They gave them 30 days to shut down the website. Wouldn't you just stress? Oh, you would shit yourself. Oh yeah. But also, when Noel Biederman came on board, he employed one of his friends by the name of Evan Back as the VP of sales. Yes, this man, you can see him in the Ashley Madison documentary on Netflix.

31:56 He's the guy with the glasses. He clearly states in that, that so he's been employed. He's never really used a computer before. They've paid him back in 2004. They've paid him, I'm sorry, 2007. They've paid him $100,000 + 10%. Like shares 10%. Yeah, that's the single company. Yep. And he says that the promise of security at Ashley Madison was something we said, not something we did. So there would be repeating themselves. Well, there was a whole. Knowing that they weren't actually protecting people's data, no, they had no extra anything in place.

32:38 They were just saying that they did the way. That subscription level of a full delete subscription, yeah, which didn't do any. Like people were fully paying for something that wasn't even occurring. Yeah. So in order to delete your profile, this was another genius thing they did. Yeah, if you wanted to fully delete your profile and they said they deleted all your data, they didn't. You had to pay $19.95 say which you would. Expect today, today like that just should be a stand. You don't pay for that.

33:05 If I delete my account, you delete my account. Yeah, but I also totally get why they did what they did that people over a barrel. They were collecting so much personal information. They got people to decide, like they put their height, weight, age, kinks, things, you know, sexual fantasies and preferences in that. Yeah, I'd want that friggin deleted forever too if I was deleting my profile. Yeah, that even just shutting down accounts brought the business 2 million odd dollars in revenue a year. Yeah, just to shut down accounts.

33:31 So for doing nothing, and they were literally doing nothing. It's not like they were actually deleting this data. No. Just going back to the, the, how they, the, the credit side of things, it cost people, men 149 U.S. dollars to buy 50 credits and you had to spend a credit to send a message. Wow. So that shows how expensive it was. It's three. What's that, $3 a message? Yeah, right. Yeah. Just to write back a, you know. Oh. Good. Hey, how's it going? Yeah. Yeah, you'd want to be getting to the point pretty bloody quickly.

34:04 Hey, let's meet at this place this time. I'll see you there. Yeah, yeah. So no wonder like the the the Fembots created such a big revenue for them. Absolutely they would keep them on the on the tag like for longer and longer to like. And this this guy on the other end is probably going like, well, if I keep responding, I might get further and might be able to get her. Yeah, it's. Crazy, at what point are these men going like some of these bots? You see the photos of the women, they are stunning and.

34:29 That's what some of them were complaining about, Yeah. Like kind of going these aren't real like. Yeah, surely not. That good's not actually messaging me. So some of them passed the sniff test, others didn't. No, no. It's it's it's crazy. Yeah. So they you know, the the breach comes the data breach of the impact team have made contact and actually medicine or their parent avid life media are beating themselves. Yeah, so they are not in a good place. Like they are hunting everywhere and anywhere.

35:06 Like what can they do to stop this? How can you know? How have they been able to access this? Who could it possibly be? And all these sorts. This is growing. So apparently the officers were just mental at this point. But only a week in, So they've got 30 days. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, there's a good amount of time they didn't they weren't being. I mean, they they clearly knew what they had. I think this, this person person's they had the data, you know, they were gonna release it, but they've given them 30 days to make the decision of what they're gonna do.

35:34 It wasn't like they were like tomorrow we're gonna release it. Yep. They gave them a massive amount of time to get their shit together and make a decision on what was gonna happen. But after only one week of that, a guy by the name of Brian Krebs, who was a cyber security reporter or still is he basically one of the most well respected reporters around this kind of side of technology. He was a New Yorker. He so he was contacted directly by the hackers, the impact, the Impact team, which is really unusual.

36:11 So at this point, obviously this is not public knowledge that you know this hack is potential. No, actually that doesn't have aware obviously and nor have the impact. And in my mind, I would think that you wouldn't want it out in the public at all. Like this would be the worst thing you would want to have happen. So as long as I can keep that under the wraps and hopefully within the next 30 days, I can, you know, avoid this occurring, you know, basically is the plan here, you would think. Well, I think Ashley Madison's plan was to figure out who it was and take them down.

36:37 Take. Them down that's right and then that happens and then this you know none of this release and therefore the people who are who could have been impacted never even knew it was even a possibility. Yep, that would be in an ideal world in their minds. So this Krebs guy he gets a an e-mail directly from the hackers and in it were links to snippets little bits of some of the stuff that they have on them. So they literally there was some a couple of links that he went to he was like OK, this is full on like if they've got this that's bad like but being a genuine journalist he can't just go and report on this.

37:15 He needs to confirm that this is legit and that it's the company is aware of it and know all these sorts of things. So one of the links he clicks on actually had a list of all the employees of the company. And at the very top of that list was the CEO and it had his e-mail address, his phone number, everything. So this guy goes, oh, well, I'll take a pop here and dial the CE OS number and see if you'll talk to me and see if we can confirm this. So you would think though, if there's a reporter who rings the CEO of the company when this shit's going down, that he would deny, deny, deny.

37:49 He did not, no. It was a three to four minute conversation where Biederman basically said, look, Yep, this is going on. We know who it is, we know who it is, but just trying to work out how we're going to go about this. It's clearly someone who's had access, unfortunately still has access. You know, he put it all on the table where they were at. He did not flinch at saying what was going on, which I find really interesting. Yeah, I was about to say, do you find that bizarre? I found that detail really bizarre.

38:19 Because he is a marketing genius. Yeah. What was his? Why did he think? Yeah. What was the benefit of of doing so, especially so early on? Because they still didn't really know. In fact, they absolutely didn't know what they were dealing with and what the outcome was actually going to be. Because at the start they thought this was just a threat. Yeah, they thought off. There's no way. And then it was once they had, because they had some really clever people working for them that they figured out days later, oh, actually, this is possible.

38:47 Our security isn't actually. I mean, they knew their security wasn't great, but they realized just how great their security. Was they weren't able to get them out of the system. That's it. There was nothing they could really do these. These hackers, or hacktivists as I've heard them called, really had infiltrated their systems and they they had no way of getting teasing that out and getting them out. And what? This journalist then, what he had received already was stuff that he he then could confirm for them, This is bad for you, you know, like he knew what he was looking at.

39:19 Yeah. And he's like, if they've got this and been able to send me this, you're in the shit. So I guess they both were confirming for each other. But yeah, I, I, I just don't understand as ACEO why you wouldn't go no comment, you know, or, and totally not allow them if you had to report something yet. Totally. But let him have it. And So what did he do that exact night? He wrote his article stating what was going on over at Ashley Madison. And the next day, 20th of July, the media is a storm of this story.

39:47 Yeah, it is huge. It is worldwide news. I mean, I actually remember this happening. So do I, I remember it as well. The other thing is I think we haven't even touched on this yet. We've, we've been talking about it being sort of Canadian, US. This was in 50 countries, 70 different languages. This was all around the world in countries like Saudi Arabia where adultery is illegal, in fact, it's punishable by death. You know, the, the implications of this were massive. I. The gravity of that had not yet sunk in, and I don't even know that especially the reporting of it, that they would have even had time or the wherewithal to consider the impacts of getting this out there.

40:32 Well, I certainly don't think that someone like Noel Beedeman ever considered that. No. Well, he he even if he did consider it, he didn't care. No, he he did not give a shit around the the, you know, people who could be impacted by that at all. Not Yeah, I mean the setting up of the website even says. That Yeah, I mean, they, they were active as in Ashley Madison was active in India where there were a lot of arranged marriages. And it says, we know your marriage is arranged, but let us arrange your affair.

40:59 Oh. Yeah. Right. And so and which again, it is incredibly frowned upon, Yeah, in a lot of countries where Christianity and, you know, Catholicism and, and, you know, there was, it was so ingrained it, it the impact is absolutely unknown. I. Mean at this point, it's still only a threat. Like, you know, it's so there's people around the world panicking going, I'm on that website. Shit. Oh God, what am I going to do? And so even the threat of it now getting out into the world is, is enough for people to be in fairly look, I'm, I'm on the fence a little bit of like sympathy in terms of the person who was on the website, you know, that they've put themselves in that position.

41:41 It's impacting so many people. Overnight, they lost something like 2.4 million users who paid to delete their accounts. Yeah, too late. Not it was too late, number one. But also, we already know that all of the whenever people deleted accounts, it didn't actually delete anything. But it goes to show that 2.4 million people acted immediately going holy fuck, get the hell out of there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, obviously the Netflix documentary, they go into quite a few stories specifically around people that is impacted.

42:10 But there's, I mean, that was only such a small amount. I remember there was a radio station here in Australia as well who, who tapped into this? And that was, you know, searching databases and things for people. But yeah, people were calling in and saying to this Australian radio station and saying to find out whether their partner was on there. Yeah, on the list or not. Yeah, yeah. But even just before it even got released, the data like that, the level of anxiety for people was very extreme. Yeah.

42:38 So anyway, come to August 18th and then again on August 20th actually there was two dumps of of data. The press release from the Impact team again was came out and this time it said Time's Up. Avid Life Media has failed to take down Ashley Madison. We have explained the fraud, deceit and stupidity of ALM and then and their members. Now everyone gets to see the data. Find someone you know him in here. Keep in mind the site is a scam with thousands of fake female profiles. See Ashley Madison's fake profile lawsuit.

43:17 90 to 95% of actual users are male. Chances are your man is signed up on the world's biggest affairs site but never had one. He just tried to. If that distinction matters, find yourself in here. Well, that they almost failed you and lied to you. Prosecute them and claim damages, then move on with your life. Learn your lesson and make amends. Embarrassing now, but you'll get over it with And then the torrent file was attached. Yeah, so they released it through a BitTorrent forum on the dark web in a compressed file.

43:51 So the file was like 10 gigabytes, but it contains something like 60 to 70 gigabytes worth of data in that second dump. The first dump I think was roughly 10. Yeah, in and of itself. My understanding of a torrent is the more it gets open, the more it. Gets spread, Yeah. Is that correct? I believe so. It was. I've, I've written down some information about it, but I, I don't know enough about it to explain it. But basically they put the information out there that made it was accessible to people. The more people then decrypted it.

44:18 Yeah, yeah. Then obviously the the information was out there and anyone could access these lists essentially. And then what people were doing was creating websites with the data, Yeah. So that it was searchable, so that you weren't just looking at, you know, because there's 37 million people on that website. You can't. So you have to search through. Go scroll. Yeah, it keeps scrolling. Yeah, yeah. It was then searchable. We were making it searchable. Which, I mean, and it had. So they did release everything they said they were going to release.

44:44 They released people's full names, addresses, e-mail addresses, sexual preferences, you know, So all of that information was put out there. Yeah. Avid Life Media released a statement. Have you read this statement? No, it's really interesting. Yeah, read it to me. At this time we have been able to secure our sites not true and close the unauthorized access points, also not true. We are working with law enforcement agencies which are investigating this criminal act. Any and all parties responsible for this act of cyber terrorism will be held responsible using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act DMCA.

45:26 Our team has now successfully removed the posts related to this incident, as well as all personally identifiable information about our users published online. None of that was true. What? That's crazy. It's like, it's like away. With, I don't know. But this, this then formed part of the lawsuit against them because none of that was true. They were working to try to do that, but the information had already been leaked, and they knew what the hackers had access to. They knew what had been tapped into.

45:57 Yeah. That's that's just. Crazy, just going back a little bit because I found this part of the story really interesting before all this happened. Let's just say a, you know, a husband's been on Ashley Madison and a wife finds a credit card transaction that she doesn't know what it's for. And some of these men, like I've seen credit card transactions when I was looking into this where they have, you know, multiple 150 dollar $149 charges in a day because they're buying that many credits to have these conversations, right.

46:27 So wives are then looking at credit card statements ringing up the company. They go through a, a separate sort of payment portal company staffed by Ashley Madison. They'd ring up the customer service and basically say, what are these charges for? These are unauthorized. And they would say, oh, we're a third party. We don't, we, we take payments for lots of different organizations. We actually don't can't identify which what these charges are for or you're not the bill holder. We cannot discuss this with you if the wives then called back with the husbands on the phone.

47:03 Yep. They did, which they did because they were like, no, no, no, there's something obviously wrong here. We've had all these charges that we haven't paid for. He'll be playing along going, yeah. Yeah. What's going on? It's. Going on our credit card. To Ashley Madison's credit again, they would reverse the charges. They'd be like, oh, we're we're so sorry. That was absolutely taken in error. Let us reverse the charges. Then on the other hand, they'd get back on the phone with the husband and go get us a new credit card, dude, because otherwise you're, you're in arrears.

47:28 You can't. Yeah, you cut off and they would. They'd go and get a credit card behind their wives backs and they started again. Georgie that that's, that was their business model, you know that that I mean, Oh. My God, I know it blows. Your mind, doesn't it? It blows your mind. Can you imagine? Like, I just can't imagine getting a job and going. So when people come up and career their bill, you just need to lie about things and back the and just basically, yeah. And there were so many women working in customer service.

47:54 This is it's, it's so uncomfortable. With me, this is it. Where's the sisterhood Yeah, like like I just can't I don't know how like this whole story, all of it, just the the ethical side of it really gets me Same. And that's where I say, like, I sit on the fence around this whole who are the victims here and how sorry I feel for persons who named whose name was leaked because, yeah, that's crap. You should have your data, should be, should have been protected as it was promised to you. Yeah. But at the same time you were doing something that was really fucked.

48:22 Up, absolutely. Let's get into a few of the names that were leaked. This is this is my favorite bit. So there were quite a few really well known people whose names were exposed, The most prominent of which or one of the first released. So in that first data dump, this person was released. And that was Josh Duggar. Yeah. Of 19 Kids and Counting fame. So he's the eldest son of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. Oh my God, we could do we? In fact, you know what? We should do an episode about it then, because what an.

48:55 Absolutely. I have to be honest, I've never got my head fully around. That whole OK, well, shit show. Let me just let me just tell you, Josh Duggar. Yeah, I've. I've heard bits but I'm. So they're the Duggars are devout fundamentalist Christians, but they've started their own church essentially or worship with another family and then that's grown to be what it is today. They live by really old fashioned outdated values like women must wear skirts below their knee. Women are not to basically be educated.

49:31 They work in the home, they look after the children, the men go out and earn the money. There's so many problematic things. Yep, Josh Duggar in and of himself is so problematic as a teenager. It later came out that he had been sexually abusing 5 girls, four of whom were his sisters. So the the show's called 19 kids and counting because these people have 19 kids because. They don't believe in contraception. They don't believe in contraception and they, you know, any child that God bestows upon them is a blessing.

50:02 So they've got nineteen children. Oh yeah, Josh, who is freaking enough. Oh, I know, right? Barely. Barely managed the two that we've got, Josh. Yeah, as I said as a teenager, sexually abusing is his sisters, four of his sisters and a a family friend. He married a woman by the name of Anna and they have gone on to have seven children of their own. Oh God. Wow. So months before the Ashley Madison scandal arose, he was, he wasn't even, he was interviewed by police about the molestation when he was a teenager at the time of not a lot happened at that time point in terms of him then receiving consequences for that.

50:57 That actually came a little bit later, although he was never actually convicted of any of those crimes. Oh, really? At the time of the Ashley Madison data breach, he admitted to adultery and issued an A public apology on the family's website. On the Duggar family website, it was woefully, yeah, inadequate. Yeah, yeah. Well, what would be enough? To be honest, it just. Oh, he remained married to Anna. I think they actually went on and had another. So I think at that time they might have had five kids.

51:29 They've gone on to have another couple. Oh Jesus, this piece of shit is currently serving 151 months in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of receipt and possession of child pornography in 2021. So that just gives you stop. Oh, no, it doesn't stop. Yeah, it doesn't stop at all. At the time he was trying to be, he was trying to like get into Congress or something, like he was doing something in Washington. And obviously this completely derailed that because the fundamentalist Christians were like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, we are not.

52:02 We are. Even though I was gonna say this, it's so problematic as a as a thing, but they distance themselves from him publicly. OK, Yep. Good. Yep. Good. So he's he's one we then have I know you love these guys, Sam and NIA. So they were on the again, again, Christians isn't this isn't. Interesting. They have a YouTube channel. Yeah, two and a half million subscribers. It is, you know, Rakes it in for them. They are on the Netflix documentary. So weird. So their YouTube channel became incredibly popular after I know you hate this, and it is so gross.

52:44 And I get it After Sam, the husband, yeah, revealed to his wife that she was pregnant. Do you wanna get into that? Should we discuss that now, 'cause I don't feel like there's gonna be an episode in that otherwise? Oh God, no. No way. I wouldn't. So, yeah, basically what he was an AD nurse or a nurse at the time. Yeah. So he got this brand, this grand idea that since I think they already had at least one child at that stage, not two. Yeah, they had two, two children at this stage where? And he was like, oh, wouldn't it be amazing for me to be able to, you know, surprise her that she was pregnant with the child that she's carrying in her body?

53:21 Like, so he decided that since he quite often does this, you know, in his work, because, you know, women rock up to Ed with symptoms or something. And then he's the one who sort of goes to the woman and says, oh, well, the reason you're feeling this way, you're actually pregnant. Congratulations. He was like, oh, it wouldn't be amazing if I can do that for my wife. So she and I don't, I don't know, I sort of do query whether or not this is legit. I have no no judgement that she doesn't flush her toilet overnight because she's got small children and I. Lived in a small house.

53:53 And yeah, I that does not faze me my slightest if that's what they do. No, you don't wanna wake up your kids. God, if that's, if that was something that was gonna wake your children up, just don't flush the toilet overnight. Totally do what you do, you gotta do. But he would he collected the urine in the in the toilet, which to me then it's watered down. Yeah, it'd be very dilute. Well, I just think look, if if she was pretty far along, then OK, you might get, you'd still potentially get a. Reading she might.

54:17 She would know herself then, like well. She in that video. So I watched it last night again because I just wanted it fresh in my mind for today. It's so fucking cringe worthy. Yes, just it's her ruse as my as my sister-in-law would say. It's gross. Like it's just it makes me cringe. Nah he puts the pregnancy test into the toilet and he's like oh I'm so excited to tell her and she doesn't believe him at the start. She thinks he's brought home a pregnancy test from work from somebody who's who was pregnant because apparently According to him, she'd I think phoned him the night before and said, oh, I just realized my periods 2 weeks late.

54:57 But it all to me, it all doesn't matter. Like I think it's staged. But this made them this episode or whatever you call it of their. Yeah, this YouTube video that they've uploaded. That's what got their start. They'd been making videos and things were going OK. The one. Part of that was them singing frozen songs in the car or something that had gone a bit viral. Yeah. And this kind of like off the back of that. Really, Really. Yeah. Which I think a lot of it was a little bit of Noel Beeterman style, you know, people being like, what?

55:25 Like that's not right. Like, yeah. And so a lot of that, I think what is what exploded them, you know, so much people going, oh man, this is amazing. Their channel was based on the fact that they were really good, solid Christian family and, you know, and touted all of the Christian values. When the Ashley Madison thing comes about or, you know, is exposed, who's on there? Whose name's on there? Sam, And it turns out he'd been cheating on her. But their whole relationship. Yeah, yeah, fucking. Gross.

55:57 What a piece of shit. Yeah. And he's he. Like at first he only gave her a little bit of information. He was like, oh, no, no. I was only on there for a little bit of time and then and then it blew up. And then it was he gave her a little bit more information. Oh, actually I was on there for longer and because I think there was a bit of information came out in the first dump for him and then on the second dump there was more detail. And so he's had to confess again of like more to it. Yeah. So on the 1st dump I think he said I've never cheated on you.

56:24 Yes, I'm on the app. I've never cheated on you and I have been to a massage parlor. That was his first bit, right? Then after that, he admitted to going to strip clubs and having extramarital affairs with women he'd met on the site. They they are still together to this day. And watch the Netflix documentary. How she can forgive him. I mean, I guess that's within her faith to forgive and to stay with him. I cannot even. Oh. I'm sorry, I was like, I I rolled and I realized I'm being filmed. I can't like.

56:55 Yeah, as you said before, to each their own, but for me it's a hard no. How do you trust after that? I don't he like, you know, made as if you know I'm. I'm a changed man. Like what? Just because you got caught? Yeah, that changes you. Yeah, Sorry. That's not good enough to me. Like no fuck. Off there was also a man by the name of Josh Taekman, so his wife Kristen is on The Real Housewives of New York. Oh, now I was 22, that was. Yes, yes, yes. So he was the E Boost founder, so really incredibly wealthy.

57:28 And you know, they, you look at them like, again, a really solid family. They have a couple of kids and they're, they're so wealthy and you think they've got this perfect life. And you look at them on The Real Housewives and you think, oh, they are, that, you know, they're everything you want them to be. He claims that he's. I love the excuses. There's so many. But he claims that he signed up with friends on a drunken night and he never used the website. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. Good on ya. Nice try.

57:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hunter Biden, yeah, who is Joe Biden's son? So current serving U.S. President almost soon to not be. Oh, that's I can't even comment on that. He denied ever creating an account. And he said that somebody used an account in his like, without him knowing about it. And look, it has been shown we're unable to prove any of this. Yeah, but you never had to verify your e-mail. So I could have used Meg dot Arnold at, you know, at Hotmail. Yeah, Yeah. And I didn't have to verify that e-mail in order to then start using the site.

58:37 So there is a possibility that emails have been used random emails where they But where they find that people were right is that people use their real addresses and real given names and surnames and other verifying information they. Trusted that the data wouldn't be was. Secure. Yeah. So in this, I think in Hunter Biden's case, there's possibility. Yeah, I think it's actually a fairly certain thing that his account was used in error or like as in in a fraudulent way. Yeah, Yeah. And he said it was one of his really old emails that he hadn't used for a long time, but then would.

59:11 He have been at that point because I mean, he's not. How old would he be? Oh no, I think he was. I think he was like well into his late 20s at the time. Yeah, right. Married. I don't know actually. Yeah, like I'm just thinking who I'm who I'm picturing like and going well, maybe he wasn't even married, like. Possibly not then. Yeah, which then if he wants to go on a dating site. I guess, But then why would you sign up to Ashley Madison? You just signed up. So maybe he was married. Yeah. Oh. But then, yeah, as I said, things have come about that he's probably wasn't a legitimate one.

59:40 Yeah. Hillary Clinton's brother, however, Tony Rodham. Rodham, he also had an implication there. He also denies it, but I think there's some fairly substantiating evidence there to state that he was on the site actively. There were over 15,000 U.S. government e-mail addresses leaked with a.govor.mil. Why would you use your work e-mail? Yeah.govor.mil address. Yeah. So, military or government? Get a freaking Hotmail or Gmail account. Oh, I. Forgot and a fake one. Like one that you don't use for literally anything else you fucking idiots.

1:00:19 Oh my God, Florida State Attorney Jeff Ashton, who he was actually the prosecutor on the Casey Anthony trial, which is another case. We we do not have that on our list, but I need to add it. He says that he signed up because he was curious. Curious. About what, mate? Jason Doray, the executive director of the Republican Party of Louisiana, signed up. He was later, after this was exposed and proven that he was active on the site, hired by Trump's first administration as chief counsel for external affairs.

1:00:54 So it's. Probably minor in terms of things that someone that some people that party have done. So yeah, yeah, why not I guess, yeah. So they're sort of no, let's not. I mean, no, I don't have the mental. No, I really for that today. No. So they're just some of the more notable people who, yeah, who were exposed on the site. But there was. Just regular, you know, next door neighbors. Well, most. People were. Yeah, and and on that, I mean, it wasn't just, you know, that their their marriages then were breaking down potentially they lost their jobs.

1:01:27 You know, people were people lost their lives. People did commit suicide over this, you know, but there were also people who were being extorted and blackmailed. So they literally people would were searching through the the database finding out and that you could find the person's e-mail address and their contact details by doing that. And they were contacting them and saying I've found you on the Ashley Madison website. I will expose this to your business, business business, your wife, all this if you don't send me X amount of dollars.

1:01:56 So people were being put in awful situations, even just your regular Joe Blow like awful. I mean, to take people already in shit situations and then adding to that and blackmailing people is just so disgusting. Like, they've got to be the scum of the earth. Like, yeah. Yep, Yep, absolutely. There was one other person who though ended up getting caught up in all of this again because good point. Message. Was sent by the Impact team. Yep. And this one was directed at Noel Biederman. Solely Noel Biederman.

1:02:29 And the message was, hey Noel, you can admit it. It is real now. And then with that, they released all of his emails. Oh my God, isn't this this? And this is salacious, this. Is like, so these these emails, they they didn't just, they revealed so much. They revealed a whole lot of stuff that was illegal that was going on within the company. So that's where the fembot stuff really was exposed. As much as people were talking about it and saying it was happening and that it seemed like, yeah, that's what's going on.

1:02:58 This confirmed it. There was absolute evidence that they could use in a court case to say the fembot thing was real and that Noel Biderman fully knew about it. Yeah. So that was definitely all there. What else was there, though? It was also an exposing his in his own infidelities, and they were infidelities like more than one. Well and truly so he was. Yeah, he was doing exactly what all these patrons of his company were doing too. So I just. Feel so sorry for his wife like he has still. Together.

1:03:31 Yeah. But but again, we're going back to this coercive control thing that we mentioned it. It comes up far too often in the episodes that we go through. She got told what to say, how to say it, how to parade herself around. She's probably been told that this isn't a big deal and she needs to get over it. And she's had a wonderful life and she's, you know, been able to experience all of the luxuries that him being involved with this website of Afforda because it Absolutely. They were. They are so rich.

1:04:00 Yeah, so filthy, filthy rich. I. Mean that's what's really shit about this. So this has all been exposed about him, like the the illegal things he's been doing and the shit things he's been doing his wife, which he then resigns from the company. But yeah, he walks away with really not a scratch on him in terms of, you know, any impact financially or anything like that. He walked away having made a pocket load of money personally. Yeah, personally from that. Situation. There was a lawsuit brought about the parent company yes, which was renamed Ruby Corp.

1:04:32 After all of this came out, there were 24 lawsuits against them in total stemming from the breach. Yeah, and it resulted in a payout across the 24 lawsuits of $11.2 million. Like it's nothing. Well. What happened with that was that it was it was a class action suit where there were 42 members of that class action. And in the process of this, the judge ruled that if they, the claimants wanted to proceed, they must not be anonymous. So that meant that this the, the number of claimants dropped the minute that happened.

1:05:09 So that dropped from 42 down to only 18 claimants. So that 11.2 million had to go between 18 people. And in, in relation to how much that company made also freaking drop in the ocean isn't that it doesn't mean anything. So that company did not even bleed at all. Like that meant nothing to them. It didn't matter, even though they lost the case they discontinued, they didn't stop them doing anything. Not even, not even close. I mean the website is still active to this day and has. Very much so. It's got a very healthy subscription based yes.

1:05:43 I've got a few figures to this day, yeah, it's still active. So Ernst and Young were employed to do a study of the membership base. And what they found was currently the membership base is far more 5050 female male ratio. And generally members are incredibly happy with the security level, but it's almost like a false level of security because they believe that because of the hack already occurring, the company must be very aware of what they need to do now to keep that secure. Do you believe that?

1:06:10 No, I don't know. So I mean, if you know big companies like, you know, Optus and things like that, we know here in Australia who've been hacked. I can't actually Madison's website be hacked. Really. So in 2021, the membership base was 4.7 million. I'm sorry, 4.7 million new members were added in 2021, but globally they're at 75 million members, active members. Yeah, it's crazy, absolutely crazy. And especially when you think about now compared to when they started. And now they're a sea of apps, as we were talking about earlier, that to have a membership base of 75 million, it's insane.

1:06:47 But I guess in some ways, dating dating websites are far more considered, you know, in the norm of what people do to date these days. That's right. But not only that, so are different relationship types. People are more open to open relationships. People are more open to. Polyamorous relationships and I I get that, but there are websites out there for people, Yeah, otherwise wanting that for sure. So the fact that an adultery website is still so successful. There's no that like the, the societal view on adultery certainly hasn't changed, no, as much as there are more people with an idea of like, yes, have an open relationship or have, you know, bring other people into relationship.

1:07:26 That's, yeah, far more considered OK than it was back in the early early 2000s. But adultery is still not considered to be OK like so that hasn't changed, but this website continues. But it just goes to show you how many people out there are wanting affairs. Yeah, I you know, 50% of you know, all marriages in most first world countries end in divorce. Yeah.

1:07:53 I guess that makes up a huge amount of the people who are potentially, you know, subscribing to these websites or to this website in particular. Yeah. But just going back, I mean, they were still looking at we haven't, there's no, we don't know who the hacker was or hackers. So looking at who was responsible for this, there's a particular person and we go back to that original phone call from that Krebs, the security cyber security reporter where already actually Madison had it in line. Really, they knew they they were saying they knew who it was and that this was an ex employee who had access and somehow it remained to have access.

1:08:32 So the name of that person that they were thinking was doing this was this William Harrison. So Krebs looked at this and he was like, he was like, yeah, this could be the guy because there was he, this guy had a substantial rap sheet. He looked and found his Facebook profile. His Facebook profile had a photo of him on it with a bulletproof vest and a handgun. So look, you know, there was also then released in the dump of the emails with Noel Beeterman. There was a stack of emails between William and and Noel Beeterman that were very aggressive from William with some pretty, I mean, any semantic statements that were like lots of issues between the two of them.

1:09:13 It would become clear that Noel Beeterman had used William to do the harassment of the website from ashleymadisonsucks.com. So he was definitely a he'd been used and inappropriately by the company to do lots of things that were not OK and then. And this guy had his back up about that and was not OK when he was then dropped by the company. Yeah, but he was incredibly good at what he did technically wise. So he had the skill set, he had the. Aggression. The motivation, probably. Motivation, yeah. So he was a pretty good suspect.

1:09:47 So this cribs then looked into him a little bit further and contacted this guy's step mom just to look into his background a bit more and see where he was at today in 2015. Where is he now to like could this be him to be told by his step mom that William had actually shot himself and died in 2014? Yep. So does that rule him out from being the possible hacker? Or could he have given his access to someone else and still being some at play here and been in involved in some way at having this come about?

1:10:22 He's that's certainly possible. Or like is a real grey I reckon area over nor beat him himself. Just putting it out there. Yeah, I, I, I agree. Yeah, I think you can. Just I wouldn't trust that man as far as I could throw him. And I also wouldn't put anything past him. He is, as I said at the start, a piece of shit. Yeah, not much else has sort of been bandied about. I did see one other name, but it was disproven. So it's not even worth putting it out in the ether in terms of who was in charge of the Impact team, whether there was more than one person, whether it was a team or a person, you know, there's, there's a lot of conjecture out there.

1:11:09 I don't think it really matters at the end of the day. No, because what's happened has happened and people have. They do say around hackers is that they they have a pattern for how they do things. And somehow usually you can, I don't know enough about this stuff, but apparently if you, if a hacker has done some hacking, you can see the evidence of their hack in something else. Yes, right. And what they have said is that this impact team have never been seen prior to this or after or since. So this is the only hack that they've done.

1:11:38 So not to say that means you get away with it. You know, you can do one and this one's the one you get kind of thing. And that they shouldn't be prosecuted for for something. But at the same time, they're not continuingly to continuing to do this and hack information elsewhere. Yeah, Yeah. I don't know. It's, it's an interesting one, yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, I think. Have you got anything else to add for for the end of this? Other than just the, I guess the ethical side of it of like, you know that at the end of the day, what's consensual between a married couple is completely fine in my mind and agreed, fucking go for it.

1:12:11 But when there's deceit and betrayal involved. And all that. Secrecy. You're a piece of shit. Yep. And you, I think, yeah, you've put yourself out there, You've put your details online and you're seeking out affairs, maybe sort shit out in your own backyard. First, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah, that definitely brings us to the end of this episode. I think we could probably go on and speak about how shitty people are for a long, long time. We're good at that, aren't we? Totally. Next weeks episode we're going to be talking about the Beaumont children.

1:12:50 Yes, this is an old Australian case that look, there's a lot out there about it and I'm looking forward to really getting my teeth stuck into it so. This is an interesting one. It is, so join us next week for that. Thank you again to everybody for listening today. Please don't forget to like and comment on our podcasting apps. If you can give us a review, that would be really wonderful. Five stars, of course, that goes out saying, and thanks everyone again for joining for this week. For sure, feel free to buy us a coffee too.

1:13:22 You'll find all the links in our show notes as well as all their links to our socials in there too, and our sources and links for this week's episode. So thank you very much for joining us. Stay curious, crime besties. Bye.