We all knew it was only a matter of time before AshleyMadison.com would face a massive lawsuit following its data breach. Now, the first domino has fallen.
The two companies that own and operate the cheating website — that's Avid Dating Life Inc. and Avid Life Media Inc. — are facing a $578 million class-action lawsuit from two Canadian law firms.
The law firms have a website set up encouraging former Ashley Madison users to join the suit.
The Ashley Madison breach leaked the personal information of some 37 million users — nearly 10 gigabytes worth of names, credit card numbers, addresses and more.
And now that the information is available online, the fallout has been massive. Along with the lawsuit from Canada, there are two unconfirmed reports of suicides as a result of the leak.
"To the hacking community, who engage in discussions on the dark Web and who no doubt have information, we are also appealing to you to do the right thing." Toronto Police's Bryce Evans said.
Despite how widespread the hack has been, some think there isn't much of a case here.
"You can Google the terms of use, which I did recently, and what it provides is that if anything as relative to a third party, we can't be held liable. So when you login and sign to the terms of the contract, you agree to that," said defense attorney Richard Roth Defense.
The class-action suit from Canada joins another filed in Missouri back in July for $5 million.
