All language subtitles for T.A.M.A.S01E02.Cheaters.Beware.1080p.DSNP.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-CMRG_track3_[eng]

[♪ bright music playing]

What caused me to
join Ashley Madison?

Stupidity.

I had been married
for 12 years.

And I joined because
I was a journalist

working on a report
on why women cheat.

I had already
been on two dates.

On my third date,
going to that restaurant,

I was driving faster.

I had music on loud.

I was excited to get
to know this person.

[♪ upbeat music playing]

I see this woman,
and we sit down,

and we have a fantastic talk.

We order food,
and we were drinking wine.

And she's super smart,
and we have this connection.

She leaned in to kiss me,
and it was there

that I realized
that I had no out,

like I hadn't planned
to go as far as I had.

Shh.

[exciting music]

[female anchor 1]
Controversial dating website--

Ashley Madison
has been hacked.

Exposing would-be cheaters.

[female anchor 2] Disturbing new
developments following

the exposure of customers
on the infidelity website,

Ashley Madison.

They are going to expose
millions of dirty secrets.

[female anchor 3] It's a great
time to be a divorce lawyer.

[female anchor 4] A significant
percentage of the population

is about to have
a very bad day.

[♪ instrumental music]

[♪ upbeat music]

[Noel] Long before I launched
Ashley Madison,

there were affairs,

and long after I'm gone,
there'll be affairs.

And so what I'm
just trying to do

is help people have
the more perfect affair.

[Eric] What Ashley Madison
were able to do successfully

was to become part of
the cultural zeitgeist.

[gasping]

[male announcer 1]
Sassymadison.com.

It's not cheating if you
don't know the person well.

They became
the bad boys of love.

Nobody's going
to have an affair

because they saw
a 30-second TV commercial.

They have affairs because their
life isn't working for them.

Why advertise then?

Because I'm in the business
of making money.

[cheers and applause]

In 2009,
Ashley Madison claimed

to have 2.7 million users,

and they were active
in three territories,

Canada, the US, and Ireland.

And then they wanted to do
what every tech company

wants to do, which is scale.

[Sunny] And so they decide
to look at Asia

for expansion of their brand,
and they go to Japan.

And within eight months,
they have a million subscribers.

And now the thought is bingo.

Where else in Asia do we go?

[Claire] South Korea was
the first market

that Ashley Madison entered

where what they were selling
was actually illegal.

That infidelity was
against the law there.

[Paul] When we launched
in South Korea,

we put up a campaign basically
saying even if you look like

Kim Jong-un,

dictator of North Korea,
you would still have

a chance of having
an affair on our site.

I think on our first day
we had 40,000 people join

solely from South Korea.

And in two weeks,
they shut us down.

[Sunny] And what Noel
masterminds this time

is to sue the government
of South Korea

for anti-business practices.

Within a few months,
the website is back up,

and they repeal the law.

[Noel] Infidelity, it turns
out, is pretty global.

Even in cultures where
it's prohibited by law,

people still do it.

And there's really
no marketplace that we

can't see us expanding into.

[Sunny] And it's around
this time that Noel Biderman

starts to call himself
Noel Winnerman,

and rightfully so,
because he's winning,

winning, and winning.

In 2009,
they claimed to have

2.7 million members.

Fast forward to 2014,

they claimed to have
22 million members.

I mean, that type of growth

I don't know is seen
in any industry

other than perhaps his.

[Claire] Once tech companies
have grown to a certain point,

the next logical thing
to do is to go public,

do something called
an initial public offering,

where you offer shares of your
company on a stock exchange.

And this is also
the point at which

the founders and their
initial investors

cash in, make a lot of money.

There is great interest
at the investor level

for institutions
and individuals.

I think they just
want to keep it quiet.

They want to be able to lie
down in their bed at night,

look over at their spouse,
and if their spouse says,

"Oh, what'd you invest
in today?"

They know they invested
in Ashley Madison,

but they don't
want to tell them

why they think that's
a good investment thesis.

[Claire] Banks have
to underwrite the IPO,

and banks didn't
necessarily want

to be associated with a company
that was dealing in adultery.

[Paul] We were looking at
whether or not

it would be viable
in a European market,

specifically the London Stock
Exchange because the morals

around business there
weren't as puritanical

as the New York Stock Exchange,
the NASDAQ,

or the Toronto Stock Exchange.

[Claire]
London, on the other hand,

might be a little bit
more open

to Ashley Madison
as a sin stock.

Sin stocks are
stocks in something

that people have some
moral questions about,

things like tobacco,
weapons, gambling,

that often can outperform
the broader stock market.

[Sunny] At the time, people are
thinking ashleymadison.com

is a tech unicorn.

Maybe it is a company that's
valued at $1,000,000,000.

Maybe he hit the jackpot.

[female interviewer 1] What's
the revenue like for the site?

[Noel] We're on a quick race
to about $200 million

in annual sales,
and I think once we hit that,

with our profit margins,

that makes us an extremely
valuable property.

It's a great internet
success story.

[♪ upbeat music playing]

[Claire]
Avid Life Media was going into

this IPO attempt in 2015,

making some big claims.

[Paul]
You know with money markets,

people throw out numbers
all over the case.

We never put a number
out there.

But I saw $500 million
to, you know,

upwards of $1,000,000,000.

I saw some numbers
related to that.

[female anchor 5] He built
$1,000,000,000 business

betting on infidelity,

25 million members
in 37 countries.

We're the second biggest
dating service on the planet.

This is not a kid's game.

This is an enterprise
of significance.

[Charles] We were there for,
I don't know, about 90 minutes.

And I moved into a place of--

of wanting to seduce her,

to go across the street
to the hotel,

and she agreed,

which I did not expect.

But I froze.

I couldn't do it.

I told her, like, very quickly,
it just came tripping out,

that I was a writer
working on an article,

investigating the real world
reasons why women cheat.

And this was a part of it.

It took her a minute
to process it,

and I'll never forget
the look on her face

because I'm such
a garbage human being.

She threw a drink on me very
melodramatically, but I'll--

so I left and went home
to face wrath,

as I should have.

As I should have.

[♪ soft dramatic music]

We walked into the office.

It's only 9:00 in the morning,
haven't even had a coffee yet.

If I recall,
it was business as usual.

[Paul] Some of our teams
opened up their--

their laptops,
and there was a message.

[♪ foreboding music]

[laptop chimes]

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[music continues]

It was then kind of
a full panic mode

at that point for the
majority of the executives

at the very least.

And that there was a lot
of worry at that point.

There wasn't a panic.

There wasn't a sense
of chaos or confusion.

It was very orderly,
very serious.

Somebody wanted us
to shut our business down.

There was no ransom,
so it was a moral play.

Shut down your business,
or in essence,

I'm going to shut it down
for you.

[Eric] Noel definitely looked
somber and awakened,

for lack of a better way.

He was-he was certainly
feeling pressure.

It became very quickly
a sense of not knowing

what was up, what was down,

you know,
were our futures secure,

what was going to happen.

[Claire]
Impact team was essentially

blackmailing
Avid Life Media

and saying that if they didn't
take down Ashley Madison,

they were going to
release all of this data

on all of their users,

basically the most
embarrassing possible thing

that could happen for
a company that marketed

itself as being discreet.

There was no way we were
shutting down our business.

[male announcer 1] Isn't it time
for ashleymadison.com?

That wasn't going to happen.

[♪ suspenseful music]

[Paul] The individual
or individuals responsible

communicated
with one journalist,

and that was Brian Krebs.

At the time, I think that
there were two main

security blogger experts that
everyone was turning to,

and that was Brian Krebs
and Troy Hunt.

Brian Krebs is-is the guy
that finds the bad guys.

Like, he is the one that is
always able to like,

track down interesting stories
and getting detail out of them

that no one else does.

I would say he is
the most respected

cybersecurity reporter
in the world.

[♪ instrumental music playing]

[Brian] I'm an independent
investigative reporter.

I worked at The Washington Post
for about 14 years

before I launched the blog
krebsonsecurity.com.

And I write mainly
about cybercrime.

You work as a reporter
long enough,

you start to get a sense
for when something might be,

A, exclusive,
at least for the time being

and, B, might not be so if
you sit on it for very long.

I got that feeling immediately.

It was a Sunday evening,

and I was getting ready
to just call it a night.

And I got a notification
through the contact form

on my site

that said Ashley Madison
had been breached,

and it had links
to a number of files

that could be downloaded.

And so I grabbed those
and looked at them.

It was a few dozen
people's information.

So it was just a matter of
being able to verify it,

using information in there

that I can
independently confirm.

Helpfully, one of the documents
that the hackers leaked

was a spreadsheet
of every employee's

cell phone number
and email address.

And so I just looked
at the top of the list.

Noel Biderman was at the top.

I called his cell phone,
and he answered the first ring,

and I said, "Hi, it looks like
you're having a bad day."

And he said,
"Yeah, we're having a bad day."

He was very rushed.

We only talked for
three or four minutes,

and he said they had
strong suspicions

of who might have
been behind it.

They thought it was possibly,
if not a former employee,

then somebody who had
had some kind of access

to their systems before.

And he even said
they were on the cusp

of figuring out who it was.

That was the easiest
verification I think

I've ever had to do for
a breach because, you know,

it's not often you get
the CEO's cell phone number,

and he answers on a Sunday.

I put up a story about
an hour after that.

And nobody likes to put up
big stories on a Sunday night,

but that's the way it goes.

The first time I heard about
the website Ashley Madison

was when Brian Krebs
broke the news

of this data breach
of this company.

Immediately, this breach
seemed significant.

The Impact Team was threatening
to release the user data

after 30 days, and if
this data became public,

it could mean some
significant consequences.

It spread slowly
at first, right?

And then it exploded.

Security breach making news

for a lot of reasons
this morning.

Hackers have attacked the
dating website Ashley Madison.

This is not the kind of
going public they wanted.

[notifications chiming]

[Brian] The next couple of days
we got more traffic

to the site
than we get normally

in a couple of months.

It was pretty ridiculous.

Probably to this day, the
biggest scoop I've ever had.

Thousands of Australians
could be feeling

a little uneasy tonight.

There might be a few nervous
people out there this morning.

37 million users.

News story after news story
came out about it,

so massive, massive

international media attention.

[♪ instrumental music playing]

[Brian] There was a month
between when they announced

the hack
and when they threatened

to release the data.

Clock's ticking.

[clock ticking]

Are they really going to

release it
on the internet just...

It just seemed like
a bad threat from a movie.

We weren't just
talking about

bits of user data,

like email addresses
or profile information.

We were potentially
talking dick pics.

[Tom] These hackers
are threatening to make public

some embarrassing
very personal details.

[female anchor 6]
Customers' sexual fantasies.

This is not a site
to share recipes.

[clock ticking]

[♪ instrumental music playing]

I remember my friend
told me about the hack.

And I was like, "What?"

People were laughing
at it, right?

Like they were thinking
like,

"Oh, well, you know,
those people,

they're getting
what they deserve."

My spouse actually
mentioned it,

and she had no idea.

I mean,
if she confronted me about it,

yeah, I'd probably admit it.

But well, that would be the
end of the relationship, but--

but I would never tell her.

[♪ instrumental music playing]

[Marvin] I turned on the news
and heard that

the site was hacked.

And that's when
it dawned on me,

oh, my God, you know,
I've got my address,

my phone number,

my profile with
my fantasies, desires.

And my life style is a swinger.

I joined Ashley Madison.

I was hoping to meet people

that were in
the swingers lifestyle.

The last thing
I ever thought about

was potentially being hacked.

[Charles]
The hack was surreal.

[bell ringing]

Waking up,
it's a normal morning.

You go in, you brush
your teeth, you come out,

you make coffee,
you open up your laptop,

and there are 20, 30 emails
from producers

and news stations
and radio stations

that wanted my take
on what had happened.

Can you just give me
some details

on who exactly you found
on the site?

Uh, sure. I went in
with a simple hypothesis,

which is why women
are cheating.

Women are there
to feel like women,

desired, wanted, and needed
beyond just housework

and work and finances
and all the things

that go with cohabitation.

I know that the woman
I took to the restaurant

didn't deserve what she got.

Like, it just tumbled
out of my mouth,

where I was like,
I'm a journalist

working on a report
on why women cheat.

She didn't know what to do.

So the only thing she said
was, you know,

"So this was all bullshit?"

And I had no answer.

Well, and by the way,
I didn't cheat,

so just to kill the conclusion
of the article.

You can read it at
yourtango.com, but I didn't--

I didn't cheat.

Just because I didn't
follow through with it

doesn't mean that
I didn't do something.

And that's what infidelity is
really all about, isn't it?

It's not just a sexual act.

This was emotional infidelity.

So in retrospect,
the entire activity

of writing the article
brought out

all the cracks in my marriage.

Then the hack happened
two and a half years

after my article went out.

I had been
in marriage counseling,

trying to figure out

if we were going to save
our marriage,

and this thing
that I had done

came back up again

when we didn't plan on it
coming back up again.

It was-it was very

exciting and terrible
in my house during that time.

[clock ticking]

[male anchor 1]
The American blogger

who broke this story says

the hackers targeted
Ashley Madison

because the company lied
to its customers.

[Claire] Ashley Madison had
a feature called full delete.

You would pay a $19.99 fee and
that the site would totally

pull every trace of you
ever having used

the site from the servers.

[Joseph] And they were making,
you know, 1.7 million a year

or something like
that from just

selling something
that nowadays would

just be an ordinary feature.

[Claire] People who had paid
for the paid delete feature

still had, you know, many
personally identifying details

that were kept in those
databases on the servers.

[anchor] Ashley Madison
yesterday suspended fees

for users who want to
delete their accounts

after hackers threatened
to expose millions of users.

[Paul] We recognized
immediately that we had

let down our members,
even if it was just a threat

to release the data
that they said they had.

And we did everything within
our power to minimize it,

but there is a notion
once the pee is in the pool,

you can't get it out.

[♪ instrumental music]

[clock ticking]

[♪ soft suspenseful music]

[Joseph] You have different
sorts of hackers, right?

You have the ones that
are financially motivated,

and they clearly
want to get a ransom.

And then you may
have hacktivists,

you know, a combination
of activist and hacker.

And they will target
a company

for what they see
is a moral reason.

[Brian] If they're not
asking for money,

that you have to assume
they're motivated

by a set of beliefs that you
probably don't understand.

That's enough to strike
the fear of God

into a lot of people.

But if you believe
the Impact Team hackers,

they claim to have been
inside their networks

for months or years.

And it's fair to say that
the tension and the anxiety,

I think, for a lot of users
was really ramping up

the closer to that date
that we got.

You have a website
catering to cheaters

that promised to safeguard
everybody's information.

Turns out, they break that vow.

And now the adulterers
are all upset.

So it turns out that--
- Exactly.

Karma is about
as much of a bitch

as your soon to be ex-wife.

It's not often
that a big company,

irrespective of what they do...

gets hacked that completely.

And everybody's
kind of like, "Yes."

[clock ticking]

[♪ instrumental music]

On August 18, the Impact Team
finally followed through,

and they released this cache
of data on the dark web.

They wrote a very nice
little press release.

They included a convenient
link to a Torrent file.

Torrent's just like...

Just broadcast as much as
we can as fast as we can.

[Joseph]
Because it will automatically

start to share the data
with others,

so not only have
you downloaded it,

you are now helping
distribute it.

[♪ dramatic music]

[Troy] It's torrented
really extensively,

so it didn't take very long
to get hold of it.

And it was very clear,
very, very quickly

that it was legitimate.

[♪ instrumental music]

Hackers have been leaking
large chunks of user data

from the website
Ashley Madison.

They've put
the information online,

including the names of
one million people in the UK.

It immediately just grabbed
international attention,

just headlines
across the entire world.

There's 250,000
email addresses

from people in Sydney
who signed up.

Every media outlet
was trying to find names

of politicians and celebrities.

[female anchor 7]
Among the high-profile victims

of the Ashley Madison hack...

[male anchor 2]
At least two dozen of them

allegedly Vatican addresses.

[female anchor 8] At least
two assistant US attorneys.

A lot of federal employees
apparently

had a lot of extra time
on their hands.

19 Kids and Counting star
Josh Duggar

is leading
a total double life.

[female anchor 9] Why would
a man who helped build

a multimillion dollar TV empire
play so fast and loose

with family values?

[Sunny] He's the star of a show
called "19 Kids and Counting"

based on family values

and what a good father
and husband he is.

And he's anything but that.

[female anchor 10]
According to Gawker,

Duggar paid almost
$1,000 to maintain

two Ashley Madison accounts
under the handles Josh the Man

and Ready for this D.C.,
and yet all the while,

Josh was lobbying for
the Family Research Council,

an advocacy group promoting
conservative Christian values,

all this just months after
a decade-old police report

revealed Josh was investigated
for multiple sex offenses,

including forcibly fondling
five girls in 2002 and 2003.

Now you've got this
disgraced reality show person.

Who else is on the list?

[♪ dramatic music]

[male anchor 3] Around 15,000
of the emails traced

to U.S. government accounts,

including the State Department
and Justice Department

and to top secret
defense contractors,

including Raytheon.

[male anchor 4] Adultery
is actually a crime

in the military.

[male anchor 5] Secretary of
Defense Ash Carter

was asked whether he
was aware of the breach

and whether the Pentagon
is investigating.

I'm aware.
Of course, it's an issue.

[♪ instrumental music]

[Brian] I started hearing from
people via the contact forum

or email or Skype
or every which way.

You know, "What do we do?
What do I do?

I'm on there."

[♪ instrumental music]

[Per] Lots of people
reached out to me

from all over the world.

And some of them were asking

can you help me
delete my data?

I can't. Nobody can.

If it's out, it's out.

There were even more people
contacting me and like,

could you look up my husband

to see if he was
in the data leak?

[Troy] I run a data breach
notification service

called Have I Been Pwned?

Pwned simply means
owned or compromised,

and I'd been doing a lot
of analysis of different

data breaches at the time
and trying to help people

who've been impacted
understand that their data

is out there floating around.

In the situation
with Ashley Madison,

there are some themes.

And one of the themes I
thought was really interesting

is I had multiple people,
usually women,

contact me and say,

"I'm in the Ashley Madison
data breach.

"The reason is I thought my
husband was having an affair.

"I went to the website,
I signed up,

"I caught him,
marriage broke up,

"got on with my life.

And now I'm in the data breach,
and I look like an adulteress."

So jeez, OK.

That's, uh...
That's beyond my expertise.

[chuckling] I have no idea
how to advise you on that.

[female anchor 11] Okay, so when
we chatted last time,

you were thinking you
would be part of the hack.

Have you looked? Have you
found your name out there?

I have gone through
some of the data.

It's very complicated.

[Charles] Over the next
few weeks, I ended up

spending a lot of time on TV
and with interviews.

And of course, it just
hemorrhaged the whole thing.

When my marriage ended,

I was traumatized
and devastated.

When you get married,
you don't plan on it ending.

You end up not separating
or divorcing a spouse.

You end up
excommunicating yourself

from the only family
you've ever had.

On top of it, now that your
kids are a little bit older,

the responsibilities and the
notions of father, husband,

those vaporize as well.

So you end up,
at least for me,

I ended up trying to figure out
like, "Who am I?"

Do I regret how
my wife was treated

or how she felt
during that time?

Yeah, 150%.

I would never ever do it again
because the price is too high.

Sometimes I think
you think, well,

if you want to be on
a cheating website,

cheating on your wife,
then you get what you deserve.

But families broken up,
there's a real human toll.

[Troy] The impact on families
was one of the things

that-that sort of struck me.

And I sort of looked
at this,

moral judgment aside, like
what is this doing to people.

The one that really got me,
and I remember I read this

just before
I went to bed one night,

which was probably
not the best time.

But this guy says,
"Tell your wife and kids

"you love them tonight.

"I shall do the same
as I really don't know

if I'll have many more chances
to do so."

[♪ instrumental music]

[female anchor 12] A number of
websites have also emerged

to search who's in
the Ashley Madison data dump.

Information spreads fast,

but it's not just like
how fast the data spread,

but how fast all these
other things appeared

around the periphery.

I mean, I remember,
even in Australia,

there're like radio programs
where people were calling up,

and they're like,
we'll check the data for you

on a search site.

[Fitzy] You've rung us.
You're a little bit

suspicious about
your partner.

[Jo] Yeah, his hours have
changed and things like this.

And when that little thing
came on the news

about the Ashley Madison hack,
he sort of went a bit funny.

[Fitzy] I feel like we're
on "Jerry Springer," man,

because this is weird
because we're putting him

into this website
right now,

and his details
have revealed

that he's actually
on the website, Jo.

[Jo]
Are you-are you serious?

[Fitzy]
Yeah, I'm sorry.

[Jo]
Are you freaking kidding me?

[Fitzy]
Yeah, no, no.

We... Yeah...

[Jo]
These websites are disgusting,

and that girl that
called before,

she should be
ashamed of herself.

[Fitzy]
Yeah... Oh, Jo's gone.

That hasn't left me
with a good feeling.

And it's just
sensationalist news

at the expense
of someone's privacy.

I think part of why the data

spread the way it did so fast,

so many people creating
searchable databases,

the reason that happened
is because people

felt like they could cast
judgment on people, right?

Like, we're exposing
the cheaters.

Look at them.

Feast your eyes upon
these people who screwed up.

Is there sympathy you think
for the victims here?

Maybe a little bit,
but not that much

because I think people
feel like,

well, they had it coming,
these are cheaters.

They deserve to be outed.

So these hackers had a point.

[Danielle] As soon as it became
searchable and accessible,

you heard that, you know,

people who are included
in that release of information

had, you know, lost jobs,
were hurting themselves,

devastated relationships.

But also,
it made them vulnerable

to blackmail and extortion.

[female anchor 13] This morning,
victims of the Ashley Madison

cheating website hack
say first, they were exposed,

and now,
they're being extorted.

There are cases of criminals
attempting to extort

Ashley Madison's clients
by threatening

to expose that
they're on the list

unless payment is received.

[Troy] It's very easy
to do technically.

And there's always this sort of
like bottom scum of the Earth

sector of society,
who will sink

to any level necessary
to extract money from you.

[Marvin] It was weird.
I came home from work.

I was checking my email,
and I had this email

from a guy named David Jones,
and never heard of him.

He said that he had my address.

He had my profile
and other details

and that,
"if you would like

"to prevent me
from sharing this dirt,

"then you need to send
exactly 2 Bitcoins

to the following address."

I was married at the time,
but I was definitely afraid

that my lifestyle would be
exposed to my co-workers,

my clients,
people that I worked with.

I felt that, you know,
if they really wanted to,

they could damage my life.

It never crossed
my mind to pay them.

And, um, after speaking
with my attorney,

he told me not to pay them.

So I kind of went by, you know,
having faith in them.

[Kristen] I do remember
there was this one guy,

who he had used the site.

He had met up with women
three times.

But he had never gone further
than like a lunch.

And somebody wanted Bitcoin.

Like saying,
you know, I know about this.

I'm going to tell
your loved ones.

Give me Bitcoin.

I just remember thinking,
"Oh, buddy, like...

[inhales]
don't go down this road.

But he was so fearful
that his wife would find out,

because in his mind, he is like
this could take my marriage,

and it was just lunch, right?

But he still gave him
the money.

[♪ instrumental music]

[Joseph] So a few days later,
I thought,

wouldn't it be good
to actually speak

to these hackers as well?

So I reached out to somebody
on the dark web,

who I believe may have
a way to contact them.

They provided me
with an email address.

I then wrote
an encrypted email

and didn't really
think much of it.

And I think about a day later,
I get a reply.

When you're speaking
to criminal sources

and especially hackers,
as a journalist,

you kind of have
to jump on the moment.

Otherwise, they are
going to evaporate

into the digital ether,

and you'll never hear
from them ever again.

The answers from the
Impact Team are very snappy.

The tone that came across
was aggressive,

triumphant, and indignant.

I'm reading out the interview

that I had
with the Impact Team.

"How did you hack
Avid Life Media?

Was it hard?"

"We worked hard to make
fully-undetectable attack.

They got in and found
nothing to bypass."

"What was
their security like?"

"Bad. Nobody was watching.

No security."

"When did you start
hacking them?"

"A long time ago."

"What do you think about
Avid Life Media

and CEO Noel Biderman's
reaction?"

"They make $100 million
in fraud a year.

"Not very surprised
they didn't shut down.

Maybe lawyers can
shut them down now."

Obviously, there is dissonance
between the idea

of the Impact Team saying

they're fighting
the good fight

while also harming
37 million people.

That is something
that often comes up

with hackers or hacktivists.

They can have
one overriding goal,

but there is going
to be collateral.

[♪ instrumental music]

[Kristen] There was this
newspaper in Alabama,

an online newspaper,
like a local thing,

called
The Henry County Report,

that published the names
of every local person,

by zip code, I think.

But then they also
included nude images

of a local doctor and attorney
who were in the leak.

They wrote,
"Yes, Wiregrass adulterers,

"Armageddon is officially here,

and we will be updating it
as more is made available."

I mean, you don't even have
to read between the lines.

They were really trying

to hold these people up
as sinners.

[Troy]
One of these here says,

"So I got a call from our
church leaders yesterday

saying my husband's work email
was on..."

and I've redacted the name of
the search service they used.

"Oh, my."

And I'm like, see...

So your church
is not only going through

looking at
their constituency

and then trying to figure out
who is on there,

going through
their email addresses,

plugging them
on this other website,

but then has the gall
to call you up

in this massive invasion
of privacy

and say your husband
is having an affair?

That's-that's appalling.

[Per] The problem with rumors,
the problem with gossip

is that you can't
really fight them.

[♪ instrumental music]

Somebody says that
you've been cheating,

and how am I going
to prove that

I haven't cheated on anyone?

You cannot assume that
because they were registered

with a service
like Ashley Madison

that they have been cheating.

There's-there's no proof
of that at all.

[female anchor 14]
The hacking of a website

for extramarital affairs
has led to embarrassment,

concerns about blackmail,
and now reports of suicides.

[male anchor 6]
As of this morning,

we have two unconfirmed
reports of suicides.

[male anchor 7] There are
new reports this morning

that suicides,
a number of them,

could be linked to the hack.

[female anchor 15] New Orleans
pastor John Gibson

committed suicide
after he was outed

as a user of the site
for married people

seeking affairs.

[female anchor 16] Reverend
John Gibson, a pastor,

a seminary professor,
happily married,

two children, and
no evidence he ever cheated.

[Christie] John had been
called in and confronted

by his employer that his name

had been found
on Ashley Madison.

A note that he had left

talked about
the Ashley Madison thing.

And so we began
to associate that

and realize that that was

was why he had
taken his own life.

[Danielle]
He wasn't alone.

There were others,

taking the most
profound choice,

which is my life is not
worth living at all.

I knew human wreckage was
to come, and we saw it.

And it didn't take very long.

[Per] This story, again,
it still haunts me after,

you know, more than
seven years now, um...

because people died.

People lost their jobs
all over the world.

There are many reports
about it.

A Norwegian man contacted me

after I had been
blogging about this,

and he said,

"I had an account
with Ashley Madison."

And he said, "I'm nobody.

"I'm just a guy
somewhere in Norway.

I'm married.
I've got kids."

Um...

"Now I'm terrified
about the fact

"that these data
will become available, uh,

"to my colleagues,
friends, family.

[♪ somber music]

"I can tell this to you,
but-but I--

"I don't know if
this helps or not,

"but I haven't cheated
on my wife.

"I've been on this service
for a couple of months.

I paid them with
my credit card."

And he ended up
committing suicide,

uh, six, seven, eight months

after the story broke.

[♪ instrumental music]

This man didn't deserve this.

His family, his wife,
his kids didn't deserve this.

For all we know,
he didn't do anything wrong.

[♪ instrumental music]

[♪ tense music]

[♪ instrumental music]

So as it turns out,
the revelations are not over.

[male anchor 8] A third
message was received

this past Thursday,

wherein the Impact Team taunts
the CEO of Avid Life Media

by stating, "Hey, Noel,
you can admit it's real now."

This was accompanied by
the release of his emails

from Avid Life Media.

[engine roars]

It's all there, everything,

all of his secrets,
all of his strategy,

all of his plotting.

It's an absolute
treasure trove.

[♪ dramatic music]

This time, the information
threatens to ruin Noel's life,

personally and professionally.

[♪ instrumental music]