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Lawyers besieged by calls after Ashley Madison hack
Divorce lawyers could be hit with a surge in business following the release of data stolen from a dating site for married people wanting an affair.
Lara Bullock
On Tuesday, the names, addresses, partial credit card numbers and email addresses of many of Ashley Madison’s 39 million users were released online by a group of hackers who call themselves ‘The Impact Team’.
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Just hours after the data was released, law firms said they were already experiencing an influx of calls from potential clients, The Huffington Post reported.
“The attorneys are unavailable because there are so many people calling right now,” a Manhattan-based divorce firm Yaniv & Associates employee told The Huffington Post. “You’ll have to call back later.”
Ashley Madison confirmed last month that data was swiped from its servers after the hackers threatened to publish personal information on the “cheating dirtbags” who use Ashley Madison unless the site got shut down.
When the site wasn’t shut down, the hackers followed through on their threats and now one attorney is predicting a "tsunami" of business from spurned spouses.
“With this release of data, every curious spouse is going to check to see if their partner is on this list,” Susan M Moss, partner with New York firm Chemtob Moss & Forman said.
“This will lead to an influx of more divorces.”
Even though these predictions come from lawyers in America, Folklaw has a feeling the situation could be much the same here in Australia.
