Ashley Madison Data Leak Leads to Possible Suicides and Extortion

Nuclear explosions are dangerous in a number of ways.  But it is the fallout after the explosion that causes the most enduring damage.

It seems there is some strange fallout from the Ashley Madison info leak. If you don’t know about it, Ashley Madison is a website that was created to help people commit adultery in anonymity.   And evidently the kinds of people that used the site REALLY don’t want their private behavior to become public.  This makes them easy prey for people with the truth and bad intentions.  For some the release of this information is not just embarrassing, it is devastating.  And this makes them prime targets for extortion.

None of this should come as a surprise. Ashley Madison is not some small, insignificant website with a few users. This site had 30 MILLION people trusting that it would become a safe secret place for dark deeds.  And it should be evident now that such a place does not exist.  As Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said, “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”  And ironically the world is not only full of unscrupulous adulterers, it is also full of people that want to take advantage of them.

This level of infidelity can only be remotely possible when we are satisfied with hypocrisy, when we are more upset about immoral people exposing infidelity than we are about immoral people practicing infidelity. Right now the news is that hackers have breached this information, when the real story is that we are so desperate to lead double lives.

In a fascinating and hopeful twist, this whole situation may become a golden opportunity. It is an open door to come clean. It may be an opportunity for marriages to heal, and root causes to be exposed.  People that have been skulking about in the shadows may paradoxically stumble into hope when the light dawns on them.  That is my prayer.

It’s not good to find out you have cancer, unless you have cancer.

We wrongly suspect that the revelation of our misconduct is the big problem, when it is actually just a symptom.  It’s not good to find out you have cancer, unless you have cancer. Then finding out opens the door for treatment.

Ashley Madison leak leads to possible suicides, Toronto police say – The Globe and Mail.