The hack that revealed the details of millions of wannabe adulterers has now come to bite the mother of parliaments in the United Kingdom.
Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, it has been revealed that right in the heart of British democracy dozens of attempts were made to try and access the notorious adultery website Ashley Madison. (RELATED: US Secrets At Risk After Ashley Madison Hack)
On Aug. 18, hackers calling themselves “The Impact Team” dumped a vast amount of data including email addresses and credit card information of Ashley Madison users on the dark web site BitTorrent.
Computers in the palace of Westminster that are used by members of the House of Commons, House of Lords and their staff accessed Ashley Madison 26 times in 2014, the Telegraph reports. Records do not go back further as parliament only stores data for one year.
However, attempts to access the website during work hours were blocked. Michelle Thomson, an MP for the Scottish National Party, had her email address revealed in the Ashley Madison data dump. Thomson has vigorously denied that she was an active user of the adultery site, claiming her email address was “harvested” by the hackers.
“I am not aware of, or in contact with, either Avid Life or Ashley Madison and look forward to finding out more about what has actually happened,” Thomson said the day after the hack.
At the tail end of August, Avid Life Media which owns Ashley Madison claimed hundreds of thousands of people were still signing up for the website whose motto is “Life is short. Have an affair,” even after its humiliating data breach.
“Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated,” the company said in a statement.
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