Canadian Adultery Website Offers To Pay $11.2m as Settlement To Over 30 Million Users Following Leaked Details

Ruby Life Inc, the owner and operator of the Canadian online adultery service, Ashley Madison, has offered to pay $11.2 million to individuals affected by the 2015 data breach.

The adultery website which encouraged people to cheat on their partners was breached in July 2015 by hackers who threatened to leak the personal details of users unless its owners shut down the service.

In mid-August, the hackers leaked details associated with well over 30 million user accounts, including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, users’ interests and their physical description, password hashes, and credit card transactions. A few days later, they also dumped internal company files and emails.

According to a CNBC report, the users affected by the breach filed class actions alleging inadequate data security practices and misrepresentations regarding the dating service.

The incident was said to have also caused huge problems for a lot of people and there have been several suicides possibly related to the leak of Ashley Madison user data. 

Late last year, they agreed to pay a $1.6 million penalty to settle charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state regulators for failing to protect confidential user information.

Ruby announced on Friday that it has also settled the customer lawsuits. If the settlement is approved by the court, the company will pay a total of $11.2 million to a fund that will be used to compensate customers who submitted valid claims for losses resulting from the 2015 data breach.

“While ruby denies any wrongdoing, the parties have agreed to the proposed settlement in order to avoid the uncertainty, expense, and inconvenience associated with continued litigation, and believe that the proposed settlement agreement is in the best interest of ruby and its customers,” Ruby stated.

Ruby also clarified that the identities of individuals who had signed up for Ashley Madison were not verified, allowing users to create accounts using other people's information.

“Therefore, ruby wishes to clarify that merely because a person's name or other information appears to have been released in the data breach does not mean that person actually was a member of Ashley Madison,” the company said.