The $19 'Full Delete' Option Made Millions For Ashley Madison Site But Didn't Work

By R. Siva Kumar - 21 Aug '15 09:58AM
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The hackers into Ashley Madison's site have made another appalling discovery---its "delete everything" service, which cost the users $19 each to delete their presence on the site did not work, according to theverge.

Now all the internal documents have been leaked out and have also shows that the company profited heavily, thanks to the "full delete" promise.

Hence, the date of birth, city, state, post, or zip code, country, gender, ethnicity, weight, height, body type and whether the user smokes or drinks, what kind of relationship a user was seeking, his current relationship status, what he was open to sexually, what turned him on, and what he was looking for in partners are still visible on the hacked database of the "infidelity site", even for those accounts who have paid for the delete service, according to theguardian.

BuzzFeed News explains one memo, which said that Ashley Madison has made $1.7 million in "incremental revenue" in 2014. Having ignored taxes and other costs, the statistics show that 90,000 users wanted to try that option in order to erase the details of their history and activity on the site.

As the data from the hack is so easily searchable as well as accessible to all, the people in the site don't even need to check whether Ashley Madison had a permanent account deletion or not in the first place, or whether it was the company that pocketed the $19 and made profits. The Ashley Madison "data dump" after all covers 36 million accounts.

"It was ALM that failed you and lied to you," the group behind the attack has retorted to Ashley Madison's users. "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."

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