Ashley Madison Earned thousands and thousands through Its “Full Delete” option

as the fallout from the Ashley Madison information dump continues, it now appears that the controversial web site made thousands and thousands in 2014 with the aid of charging users to “fully delete” their profiles.

in keeping with BuzzFeed, paperwork leaked Tuesday show that Ashley Madison, a courting web site for folks having a look to have an affair, made $1.7 million in further earnings final yr with the aid of charging customers $19 to erase their profiles and “put off all traces of [their] utilization.” however the documents don’t specify exactly what data is eliminated below the “full delete” possibility, and hackers claimed that the function was once no longer solely effective.

Any web user can now search the trove of knowledge—which contains data for 36 million Ashley Madison accounts—via a handful of internet sites which have popped up on the grounds that Tuesday evening. Leaked e-mail addresses, however, will not be official, in view that customers don’t have to substantiate their addresses when creating an account on the site. One British lawmaker informed Reuters that her electronic mail handle used to be stolen and used to generate an account on the site with out her data.

On Wednesday, Ashley Madison said that no bank card information used to be stolen, and introduced that it had no longer stored users’ full bank card numbers.

the corporate validated the information leak and believes it used to be orchestrated by way of any person throughout the firm; the FBI and Canadian police are investigating.

[via The Verge]