Staff at Transport For London, councils and London Fire Brigade are among the 1.2 million people in Britain caught up in the Ashley Madison cheating site scandal, the Standard can reveal.
The names and details of employees and senior managers at the organisations are included in the 9.7 gigabytes of personal data on users of the adultery dating site published by hackers.
Workers from HMRC, the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the BBC are also among those identified.
Ashley Madison — tagged the “Google of cheating” — aims to put married people in touch with partners for illicit affairs. It has been in crisis since personal information involving as many as 37 million users was dumped onto the “dark web”.
The list includes 15,000 names registered under .gov and .mil email addresses, the official domain names of the US government and military, as well as names linked to the Vatican, the United Nations, Ivy League universities Yale and Harvard and dozens of corporations such as Boeing, JP Morgan, Sony and Bank of America.
The FBI is opening an investigation to discover who hacked into the confidential accounts.
Josh Duggar, a married American reality star who has been involved in a child molestation scandal, was today named as one of the victims of the hack. The father of four featured in the popular US show 19 Kids And Counting — which has been dropped by the networks since the claims he abused four of his siblings — and allegedly signed up for the internet service.
It was reported that his profile stated his ideal mistress was a “naughty girl, aggressive/take charge girl, high sex drive and creative and adventurous”. He was not available for comment today. There are growing fears the data dump may not only wreck marriages but could also lead to blackmail attempts. The site promises its members complete anonymity and has the motto: “Life is short. Have an affair.’”
Some of the details, including names and addresses, have been dismissed as false. As Ashley Madison does not require verification of users’ identities it is thought some identities may have been fabricated simply for users to help cover their tracks. The hacking was carried out by a group calling itself the “Impact Team”. They are suspected of having an insider working on the company’s technical services.
The company, founded by former sports agent Noel Biderman, was said to be worth up to $1 billion before it was hacked. It has now reportedly put plans to float on the stock market on hold.
