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Ashley Madison Blackmail Letter Revealed (grahamcluley.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Security researcher Graham Cluley says he has been forwarded a blackmail letter, sent to a member of the controversial Ashley Madison adultery website. In the letter the blackmailer says that unless $2,000 worth of bitcoin is paid within 10 days, the recipient's wife, friends and colleagues will be informed of his misdemeanors. In a threatening twist, the letter goes on to give personal details of another victim who refused to pay the blackmailers, and how his personal life and work were targeted as a result. Cluley's advice to recipients is not to pay the blackmailers, but to tell the U.S. Postal Inspectors Service.
>unless $2000 worth of bitcoin is not paid
This is what you get.
This is one of the few cases where I don't support the activities of any party involved; the hackers for what they did, the website for providing/promoting such blatant infidelity, nor the people who use the site.
However, in this case, the people I support the least are the people who took their marriage vows so lightly they're using a website to cheat. It's absolutely disgusting. You get what you deserve. What to avoid the collateral damage; don't cheat. But, since you're past that point; you might as well fess up to it; and make sure you tell your family you're only coming clean about it due to a threat of blackmail. It'll make them see your character for what it really is.
Quite frankly, screw everyone all around in this ordeal. It's disgusting we're still talking about this.
In the letter the blackmailer says that unless $2000 worth of bitcoin is not paid within 10 days,
I say give them what they want.
They will continue to blackmail you. Why wouldn't they when so successful the first time? It's not like they're trustworthy or anything. If you're stupid enough to get involved with Ashley Madison in the first place, then just fess up to your wife and family and deal with the consequences. But, in the end, most of us will have no sympathy for either the scumbags who use Ashley Madison or those who blackmail them.
If you pay blackmail, you only show that blackmailing you is an effective way of making money, and thus encourage more blackmail.
The real crime: using ragged right instead of Knuth and Plass' algorithm!
The use of problematic and potentially pornographic dating sites like Ashley Madison is inherently an example of Rape Culture and the systemic patriarchal oppression of women. Not only does the website promote the exploitation (rape) of sex workers, by promoting the idea of illicit and decietful "affairs" it also denies couples the agency of exploriing open, non-binary, non-monogamous, and especially homosexual, pansexual and transsexual expieriences. As such. Ashely Madison users are explicit supports of both homophobia and transphobia, as well as enemies of the wider appreciation of social justice values in our culture.
The only real problem here is that anonymous blackmailers are the ones doing the punishing. In reality, these sites need to be made illegal and the force of law brought to bear on the sexual transgressors who use them. The Government needs to step in and protect women from monstrous internet sites like this.
"My marriage is over and everyone already knows I'm an unethical bastard. Go nuts!"
It's interesting that in the letter, the blackmailer provides no information about the recipient apart from his name and address. He lists all of the information about his prior victim, but my guess is that it's all part of his ruse. I suspect that the websites are fake and the phone number is a line straight to the blackmailer, who will corroborate the story whenever any of the many recipients of his letters call.
This requires more money to set up than an email, but the blackmailer knows that ``The wicked flee when no man pursueth."
"unless $2000 in bitcoin is not paid"
I'm sure I'd be willing to not pay $2000 in bitcoin to have my dirty laundry kept out of sight.
n a threatening twist, the letter goes on to give personal details of another victim who refused to pay the blackmailers, and how his personal life and work were targeted as a result.
Unless what purportedly happened to the "other victim" is verifiable, this is no different than what one used to read in an old fashioned chain letter. Those would invariably tell you about the riches and good fortune that had happened to (named) people who forwarded the letter to x numbers of their friends; then spell out all the troubles and misfortunes experienced by other (named) individuals who'd failed to pass the letter along within the requisite period of time. It was all imaginary nonsense.
#DeleteChrome
While being an active user of Ashley Madison may indicate an intent to cheat, a vanishingly small amount of men are successfully cheating with women who use the site.
The site only sells the fantasy of cheating with their bots.
You don't send blackmail letters IN THE MAIL.
This is now a federal crime, and the post office inspectors office, and probably the FBI, gets involved. Since this is in the news, they will probably be very interested in this case, as well.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
However, in this case, the people I support the least are the people who took their marriage vows so lightly they're using a website to cheat. It's absolutely disgusting. You get what you deserve. What to avoid the collateral damage; don't cheat. But, since you're past that point; you might as well fess up to it; and make sure you tell your family you're only coming clean about it due to a threat of blackmail. It'll make them see your character for what it really is.
I know a couple of acquaintances (not well but I do know them) who cheated on their wives with co-workers. This has nothing to do with Ashley Madison. In neither case did the wife have any idea. Both guys felt guilt-ridden about cheating, so they decided to come clean. In both cases the marriages were over on the spot. In one case the guy literally got asked by his wife to leave their house immediately and I know this because the guy he stayed with for a while is a friend of mine, not just an acquaintance. Some people really do not respond in a forgiving way to infidelity. In such cases it might be best to either deny it and claim to be an innocent victim or to try for what I'll call "pleading to a lesser charge" by admitting joining the site but denying actually ever meeting any one by it. There's a lot of evidence that a lot of female members were made up and while some spouses may not forgive you for even joining, I guess there's some chance that "It was a huge mistake and I never actually did anything" might work with a few of them.
Freedom of speech, man.
oh geeze, here we go with the SJW codewords.
Why don't you drag in how GAMERGATE uses SYSTEMD to contaminate your HOSTS file while your at it so we can have a proper flamefest.
So, you say that women do not cheat? I wonder all those cheating man [according to feminist 90 % at least] - with who are they cheating? Goats? Or are there 1000 super women on earth that can have 100 000 000 lovers each? Remember, when the scandal came out it was shown that 90 or more percent of the users of the site are men and everyone was like "see how terrible men are, bloody cheaters" , was I the only one that asked the question above?
I am so fed up with this crap!!! And your user name suggest you are a man! WTF? Get a grip of reality MAN!
Use a white envelope.
Still.... I wouldn't want to go toe-to-toe with the postmaster general.... he checks his blood sugar and checks it often...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Extortion is a federal crime. Call your local FBI office. They actually do investigate and prosecute this type of thing. They're only human; they don't know until you tell them. https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
We are still rather feral when it comes to sex. The basic biological response to sexual attractiveness occurs in all humans equipped with working sex organs. There are people who are able to suppress the mental urge to seek a mate, but the physical response is still there. Only about 3 percent of mammals are monogamous. Most great apes are promiscuous. As humans, we have to wrestle with our vestigial urge to fuck and be fucked, with the societal contradiction that sex is bad and should never be talked about openly while being force fed overtly sexualized media and marketing material.
I 100% now follow through with my threat and tell everyone you know about it. It's just good business.
By making this threat public, the blackmailee basically dared the blackmailers to make good on their threat and gave them a great marketing opportunity. The blackmailers don't give 2 emu shits about him cheating, they want money. Normally, there's no profit in actually following through with the threat, its just time that could be better used by sending out threats which generate money. However, since Cheater McDumbfuck went public, the blackmailers now have a chance to let future blackmailees that they are serious and will follow through with their threats, thus improving their ROI for sending out threats in the future.
This is why you don't negotiate or even recognize terrorists.
(tl;dr instructions: please go to the "--->" mark and read until the other "--->" mark. Mods: go ahead and mod everybody in this thread off-topic (especially me), but I needed to post GP and this comment as well because I'm about 3 minutes from midnight in my little cold war. There will be mutually assured destruction and probably some other -gategate when/if feminism and I reach midnight.)
Rape culture is the set of ideas about how people should be pressured into sex, or unwanted contact like kissing and sexual touching.
That's where it starts. That's what it should be. Over here in flyover country that turns into an accusation that all men are not only heterosexual, not only tempted to rape, but actually have raped a woman and have access to drugs like Ecstasy.
All this crap about feeling guilty and oppressing men is just that, crap.
Then why does it end up having that effect? I'm not a man (only am in the view of Michigan feminists and other bigots), but I am apparently now being affected in a tangible way. I wish I could live in the world you apparently live in. It sounds much better than my reality at the moment.
Obvious example is obvious. In 2012 every major news organization trumpeted forth news that men's genitals should be mutilated at birth to prevent women from getting a form of HPV that can lead to cervical cancer. Do I even need to point out everything wrong with that even from the standpoint of a prevention measure? The other part of the one-two punch was that the USA was in the middle wringing its hands about whether giving teenage girls the HPV vaccine was moral or not.
If you feel guilty because someone pointed out to you that you should really get informed, enthusiastic consent before getting physical, you have to ask yourself why that makes you uncomfortable.
I'm not sure why that should make me feel uncomfortable. When a TERF proceeds to misgender me, tell me I'm attracted to people I'm not, tell me I have intentions I don't, and tell me that I'm lucky I haven't been caught in the act yet, that's where I start feeling uncomfortable.
When I learn that, should somebody accuse me of raping a specific woman, that there is no possible amount of evidence I could ever present that I didn't even have sex with her, that's when I begin to feel resentment. That's when I begin to realize that I am in a hostile environment.
In fact, the cold war feminism has declared on me really started way back when I was told just that at Grand Valley State University during a presentation that all assigned males were require to attend. I could dismiss everything other time before that I've been on the receiving end of sexism as just attending a crap school district.
It's only recently that the stockpiling of nuclear bombs has begun; before it was just a skirmish here or there. There were even a few months when I scrambled my old UID where I was starting to think I had been wrong about feminism all along.
I'm still receptive to the idea that you're not just posting from an alternate dimension from mine. However, somehow if I'm wrong about feminism, feminism needs to realize it's wrong about me as well, and we need to begin the careful healing process of sealing up the nuclear weapons for good.
I don't know how that can happen. I need access to a local doctor first. I don't know what feminism needs from me other than to magically grow a womb. I'd do it too as soon as they tell me the magic words. I'm somebody who has called out sexual harassment. I'm somebody who mentors women programmers. What else could I possibly do?
If the intention was to show me what being on the receiving end of sexism is like, this is my message to feminism: I fucking get it already.
--->
I've fucking got it since third grade when I was actively discriminated against unapologetically and with full knowledge on the part of the person
US Postal Inspectors Service.
It really is called USPIS? I thought Brooklyn Nine Nine made that up.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Is there any way to send somebody something that looks like a Bitcoin, but is actually boobytrapped? Known vulnerabilities in Bitcoin wallet software would be fun, but at least some kind of exploding email attachment would be a good start.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks