More than 500 people from County Wexford have had their personal details leaked online after hackers published data belonging to users of the controversial “cheating” website Ashley Madison.
The website, which uses the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair,” was hacked last month by a group calling itself “The Impact Team.” In July, the group threatened to release the personal data of millions of users worldwide if the website refused to shut down.
On Tuesday, over 60GB of data was leaked online, complete with member details and credit card transaction information. Since then, the data has been downloaded, sorted, and analysed by several websites.
Although many Ashley Madison members used false names and incorrect dates of birth, leaked payment information going back to 2008 includes credit card holder names, addresses, and email addresses.
A preliminary look at the published location data reveals that over 500 people from County Wexford used credit cards to pay for the service. This number excludes non-paying users and those who paid via PayPal. It also excludes those in rural areas, many of whom have not yet had their addresses mapped and grouped by the various websites analysing the data.
The data shows that the service was used by 140 people from Gorey, 131 from New Ross, 93 from Wexford, and 81 from Enniscorthy. However, the figure for Wexford may be higher, as there were inconsistencies in how the name of the town was represented on the map.