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The Ashley Madison Hack...
- Thread starter OfficePants
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Fame lingers like flatulence.
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People from other countries wonder why we are in such shithole.
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Yes, yes that's the reason why. Not the mass shooting every day or the bankrupt political system or the awful healthcare system or any of the myriad other things that this country sucks at.. Its the adultery website.
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You know what I meant. Lol.
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I know. I'm just busting your chops
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My chops cannot be busted. Too big. You dig.
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Ashley Madison Code Shows More Women, and More Bots
This is fascinating. I think the CEO has to be looking at some sort of jail time for these escort matchups.
This is fascinating. I think the CEO has to be looking at some sort of jail time for these escort matchups.
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Fucking fascinating. At the very least there is a widespread fraud here.
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Great thread.
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Anything to add? Anyone in the Florida government get caught up?
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Not hard to know. Apparently a dude I know has a link to an expansive search tool where you can search *.domain name and it will give you any registration for @microsoft.com for example. Has many other search parameters too. Waiting for a response to my email about it.
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Haven't looked. Rumor is that a few appointed officials are. One state rep was definitely on it and was outed. Another state rep has a common enough name that he might or might not have been on it.
T
tosq
Guest
New York Times Says Foolish Things
Like victims deserve empathy instead of responsibility because hey, you know.....it coulda happened to anyone.
Nyt failed like it's their job.
Like victims deserve empathy instead of responsibility because hey, you know.....it coulda happened to anyone.
Nyt failed like it's their job.
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Liberal comedy.
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The NYT has gone off the rails. They aren't even pretending to have integrity anymore.
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It's embarrassing. That author is an immense clown.
LelandJ
Chicken Testicle Enthusiast
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When did the AM hack happen originally? How in the hell did it get scripted into Mr. Robot season finale which was supposed to air last week? I would've thought weekly TV series are produced months in advance?
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Just a simple voice over, it was off camera anyway.
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Apparently their membership has spiked after the scandal. Anyone can confirm?
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Don't believe it.
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Emails in Biderman’s inbox from November 2012 contain evidence that the company knew very well that most of their money came from bots flirting with men. Security researcher Alejandro Ramos found these emails, which contain an internal presentation that was passed around to many of the company managers. One slide (reproduced below) reveals that 80% of the men who “convert,” or make a purchase on Ashley Madison, are doing it as a result of engagers.
Note that the bots are called both engagers and hosts. What we see here is that the company clearly knows that the vast majority of their conversions are coming from bots. Only 19 percent of men who paid to join Ashley Madison did it after talking to a real woman. We also have clear evidence that the bots were generating almost half the company’s revenue.
On February 4, 2013, senior data analyst Haze Deng copied Biderman and COO Rizwan Jiwan on an email where he analyzed how much money men were spending to message with bots versus real women.
Deng wrote that men who had paid for credits would, on average, pay to send custom messages to 16-18 different women. “Around 35% chance, the contacted female is an engager,” he admitted. “This ratio is not so good,” he added, but he still argued that it’s “reasonable” because bots will never reply to a paying member’s messages. So the bot won’t continue to lead the member on indefinitely. And yet, Deng acknowledged, that first message the man sent to the engager is “still costing credits.”
In other words, average paying customers of Ashley Madison had a 35 percent chance of paying to send a message to a bot. And 80 precent of men paid to join after messaging with a bot, too.
Note that the bots are called both engagers and hosts. What we see here is that the company clearly knows that the vast majority of their conversions are coming from bots. Only 19 percent of men who paid to join Ashley Madison did it after talking to a real woman. We also have clear evidence that the bots were generating almost half the company’s revenue.
On February 4, 2013, senior data analyst Haze Deng copied Biderman and COO Rizwan Jiwan on an email where he analyzed how much money men were spending to message with bots versus real women.
Deng wrote that men who had paid for credits would, on average, pay to send custom messages to 16-18 different women. “Around 35% chance, the contacted female is an engager,” he admitted. “This ratio is not so good,” he added, but he still argued that it’s “reasonable” because bots will never reply to a paying member’s messages. So the bot won’t continue to lead the member on indefinitely. And yet, Deng acknowledged, that first message the man sent to the engager is “still costing credits.”
In other words, average paying customers of Ashley Madison had a 35 percent chance of paying to send a message to a bot. And 80 precent of men paid to join after messaging with a bot, too.
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How Many Real Women Were There?
It seems that everybody at Ashley Madison knew the company barely attracted any real women to the site. On October 6, 2014, a report emailed to Biderman about signups in India shows that women made up about 5 percent of new members. I wondered if that might be a number specific to India, but it appears to reflect a global trend. On November 6, 2014, Jiwan sent an email sharing the results of a survey they’d conducted of 5,000 random Ashley Madison users. Just 5 percent of them were female.
A small female user base didn’t seem to faze the company. In fact, in a slide deck emailed to Biderman on January 25, 2013, one manager describes a “sustainable male to female ratio of 9:1.” The company was aiming for 11 percent real women in any given area. But apparently, it rarely achieved that goal.
Ad fraud researcher Augustine Fou told me via email that Ashley Madison’s scam represents a new horizon in online fraud. For years, scammers have used bots to create bogus clicks on online ads, allowing them to charge advertisers for impressions that came from fake people. As a result, Fou has advised advertisers to optimize for “conversions,” people who actually buy the product based on ads. But now, he says, the Ashley Madison case shows that “even conversions can be fraudulently created, with the action of sophisticated bots.”
The Ashley Madison con may have played on some of our most ancient desires, but it also gives us a window on what’s to come. What you see on social media isn’t always what it seems. Your friends may be bots, and you could be sharing your most intimate fantasies with hundreds of lines of PHP code.
It seems that everybody at Ashley Madison knew the company barely attracted any real women to the site. On October 6, 2014, a report emailed to Biderman about signups in India shows that women made up about 5 percent of new members. I wondered if that might be a number specific to India, but it appears to reflect a global trend. On November 6, 2014, Jiwan sent an email sharing the results of a survey they’d conducted of 5,000 random Ashley Madison users. Just 5 percent of them were female.
A small female user base didn’t seem to faze the company. In fact, in a slide deck emailed to Biderman on January 25, 2013, one manager describes a “sustainable male to female ratio of 9:1.” The company was aiming for 11 percent real women in any given area. But apparently, it rarely achieved that goal.
Ad fraud researcher Augustine Fou told me via email that Ashley Madison’s scam represents a new horizon in online fraud. For years, scammers have used bots to create bogus clicks on online ads, allowing them to charge advertisers for impressions that came from fake people. As a result, Fou has advised advertisers to optimize for “conversions,” people who actually buy the product based on ads. But now, he says, the Ashley Madison case shows that “even conversions can be fraudulently created, with the action of sophisticated bots.”
The Ashley Madison con may have played on some of our most ancient desires, but it also gives us a window on what’s to come. What you see on social media isn’t always what it seems. Your friends may be bots, and you could be sharing your most intimate fantasies with hundreds of lines of PHP code.
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For real, why are charges not being pressed against this company for their blatant swindling?
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Rain Man
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I would be stunned if right now someone wasn't cross-referencing the OPM hack names with the AshleyMadison names. Anybody on both lists will very likely have their clearance pulled, or at least experience a series of uncomfortable afternoons with some very humorless assholes in Haggar Suit Separates, black Steve Maddens, brown Galco belts, and Aviators. Lifestyle polygraphs are a bitch.
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The Secretary of State intentionally violated records laws, deleted work emails, and intentionally lied about who committed a terrorist attack and you really think they're going to come down hard on people who looked for an affair?
Actually, you're right, they will come down hard on the peons and spare the top brass. #SocialJustice
Rain Man
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I was in a SCIF providing reachback support to Camp Lemonnier when Benghazi happened. We had a live feed from the embassy. I'm not allowed to tell you what happened but it's not what you think and sure as hell not what the "investigating" panel thinks. Embassy staff get killed. A lot. We try to make it happen less often.
SecState hasn't done anything anyone else in her position hasn't done. That's been brought up again and again.
What's not being said is that the Enterprise email server is a piece of shit and nobody uses it outside of the office because it simply doesn't work half the time, if not more, unless you're on a government network. I can't get into my military email this morning, and that's not unusual; there are days when I literally have to drive into the office to check my email. (Our entire team's email was down for three weeks in September when we migrated to the new system. It deadlined every unclassified box; just killed them for weeks. Half the unclassified systems still don't work and even the tech contractors can't figure out why.)
You can't use your government email from a mobile device because it takes two-part authentication. Nobody uses the system if they don't have to. You'd be negligent to send critical information over it in a crisis because it only reliably works when you're at your desk and surrounded by techs. That's what I'd like these fucking hearings to dig into: why she had to use her civilian email in the first place, who built this piece of shit that has literally crippled our military, and why they're not in jail.
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Jesus you're STILL going on about this shit? Every fucking answer to a post in a thread is "well the Sec State did all of these things and got away with it so this other bullshit isn't going to count for anything!" I expect to see some of this hand-wringing in the Volkswagen thread next.
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I'm sure everyone complains, right? So why isn't someone in the military doing something about it?
Rain Man
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Because the colonels and generals at J6 (Signal Corps; the guys responsible for comms throughout the military) have entire cadres of techs whose military careers depend on making sure the colonel/general's system works flawlessly. They don't understand why the rest of us are having problems; we must be idiots, because it works great for them. Plus, upon retirement, the J6 flag officers are offered consulting, lobbying, and boards of directors positions with the contractors that built this piece of shit, provided they can keep the military using it.
Rain Man
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Hell, I have a buddy who ended up working for a colonel who wouldn't use email. Literally, refused to use computers; never had, never would. The Privates had to print out the colonel's emails and put them in his IN box. The colonel would read them, and either hand-write or dictate replies which the junior enlisted would have to type and send. This was in 2010. Hopefully the motherfucker is retired, now. Probably not; he's likely a general in the J6.
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I'm an Inspector General, I give a shit about public servants breaking the law. Especially when they're running for President. You might want to examine why my posts about this in
I don't blame Clinton for the actual attack. Yeah, somebody asked for tighter security, but I doubt that decision even went up to her level in the first place. And I'm sure even if it did, that she gets regular requests for tighter security.
I have no doubt of what you're saying about the email issues in general. I have a friend in military intelligence who's said similar things. But if her specific email issue was as simple as you described, she would have just said that. It would have served her political needs and her ideological agenda. Instead, we've gotten constant lies, some silly bit where she actually expected us to believe she thought "wiping" a server meant using a cloth to clean it, deleted emails, etc... She knew what she was doing was wrong (and there's actually recovered email proof about it).
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I've had two different bosses like this. Unreal. The citizenry is paying you six figures and you can't be bothered to learn email.
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In Australia too:
The man heading the royal commission into union corruption has admitted he doesn't know how to send or receive emails and can't use a computer.
Dyson Heydon, who is reportedly paid $3,000 a day to oversee the commission, made the confession on Monday when he dismissed a bid by unions to have him step aside from the probe into corruption on the grounds of perceived bias.The revelation that Mr Heydon is not able to use the world's most popular form of communication was included in a 67-page ruling explaining why he dismissed an application asking him to stand down because he agreed to speak at a Liberal Party function.
The man heading the royal commission into union corruption has admitted he doesn't know how to send or receive emails and can't use a computer.
Dyson Heydon, who is reportedly paid $3,000 a day to oversee the commission, made the confession on Monday when he dismissed a bid by unions to have him step aside from the probe into corruption on the grounds of perceived bias.The revelation that Mr Heydon is not able to use the world's most popular form of communication was included in a 67-page ruling explaining why he dismissed an application asking him to stand down because he agreed to speak at a Liberal Party function.