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Toronto police say suicides linked to AshleyMadison hack

Xinhua, August 25, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Ashley Madison data breach has triggered collateral extortion crimes and unconfirmed suicides, Toronto police said Monday, warning that hackers of the cheating website won't be tolerated.

"This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world," said Staff Superintendent Bryce Evans at a news conference about last week's massive data dump by a hacker group calling itself the Impact Team.

More than 30 million email addresses and some credit card data were released as a result of the hack last month. "Your actions are illegal and won't be tolerated," said Evans.

"The ripple effect of the Impact Team's actions has and will continue to have long term social and economic impacts and they have already sparked spinoffs of crimes and further victimization," said Evans.

Police said the sophisticated hack has also sparked online hate crimes and led to unconfirmed reports of two suicides but did not give any further details. U.S. media reports have said a police captain in San Antonio, Texas took his own life after his official email address was linked to an Ashley Madison account.

The infidelity website's Toronto-based parent company, Avid Life Media, is offering a 500,000-Canadian dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible. The company has not revealed how much data was stolen by hackers.

On July 12, the hackers threatened to leak user details unless the company shuts down Ashley Madison, a website that facilitates extramarital affair, as well as another of its sites called Established Men, which links young women with wealthy older men.

When the company refused, the hackers dumped Ashley Madison's client list online on Aug.18, along with a simple online post saying "time's up." A second data dump on Aug. 20 released emails of Avid Life CEO Noel Biderman, along with a taunting message.

According to U.S. media, one analysis of email addresses found in the data dump shows that about 15,000 email accounts end with ".mil" or ".gov".

However, Toronto police said the nature of Ashley Madison's website is "of no interest" to investigators and the only criminal wrongdoing in the case has been committed by the hackers.

Speaking to the Impact Team, Evans said "this is your wake-up call," adding that the law enforcement has some good leads and the investigation is "progressing in a positive fashion."

Toronto police are working with Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as the U.S Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada is also investigating the breach. "Given that the company is based in Canada, and considering the global scope of the incident, our office will be investigating jointly with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, and in cooperation with other international counterparts," spokeswoman Valerie Lawton said in an email.

Avid Life Media has been hit with a Canadian class action lawsuit over the breach. The lawsuit alleges the privacy of thousands of Canadians was compromised. Endit