Why Your Info Might Be In The Ashley Madison Hack, Even If You Weren't A Member

Photo: Martti Kainulainen/Rex/REX USA

Revelations about the notable men discovered to be using the cheater-enabling website Ashley Madison have been rolling out all week following the release of its email database by hackers, from Josh Duggar to White House employees. But it turns out that many women who never signed up for the site at all may have had their email (and mailing) addresses stolen and revealed in the big hack.

The Daily Telegraph reports that in a $10 million lawsuit filed by former employee Doriana Silva in 2012, she claimed that she was "made to input as many as 1,000 fake female members" into the site's database in three weeks. "They do not belong to any genuine members of Ashley Madison — or any real human beings at all,” her suit claimed.

This revelation is key in the wake of a new $5 million lawsuit filed on behalf of an woman whose data was exposed in the hack, who paid the site's $19 delete fee to have all of her information removed from the site and its database when she left the service. She discovered that her information was revealed in the hacked files.

Silva's claim, which was filed because she said she suffered repetitive strain injury (RSI) from working on the profiles, stated that the fake profiles she created were to "entice paying heterosexual male members to join and spend money on the website." Addresses and corresponding information for women were bought in bulk, with Silva ordered to make up fake details about them. Her suit was countered by Avid Life Media, who own Ashley Madison, and both sides agreed to drop their lawsuits earlier this year.