HUGH ADAMI,

Clients can sign up with any email, even that of an enemy or stranger

The welcome email came on Aug. 5, to my Citizen work address.

It was from the AshleyMadison.com, the adultery/infidelity website in the news since early July after hackers stole a ton of data from the online company, including customer information. The hackers, who call themselves Impact Team and are on some kind of witch hunt in the name of morality, threatened to release customer identities and information such as clients’ sexual fantasies if the website and another, EstablishedMen.com, weren’t taken down. There would be much wringing of hands, we were told, and the room temperature got a lot higher this week as the Impact Team made true on its promise to start releasing client information.

How did Ashley Madison get my work email? I had never visited the website, let alone joined. But the email urged me to “login and get started.” The website boasted many services. Not only could it help me find an discreet mistress or two, I could take advantage of the website’s “Traveling Man” feature — allowing me to connect with someone while on a business trip; have a “Fantasy Chat” by going on a “virtual date”; and get “Priority Man” status by having my profile highlighted. Pretty creepy stuff.

I took some comfort in that the email was sent weeks after the breach, so the hackers could not possibly have my work address to share with the world. Ashley Madison was just trying to drum up new business in light of the scandal, I figured. And when I looked at my so-called profile on the email — five feet, four inches tall and 330 pounds — I laughed and thought, OK, an email address is all they have. But one question continued to bother me: How did Ashley Madison get my work email address?

Another email arrived minutes later, this one telling me I had a “new message” and that I could reply to “Sometimes” — presumably if I approved of her vital statistics. Apparently, this 23-yearold Kingston woman’s “limits” were “Anything Goes.”

I really didn’t know whether to laugh at the latest email or let it bug me even more. To me, dating or matchmaking websites are a weird way to meet a new girlfriend or future husband. But a website that tells you — Life is short. Have an affair — spells big trouble. I wondered about this woman “Sometimes.” Did she really exist or was she a figment of someone’s imagination at Ashley Madison?

The next day, Aug. 6, another “new message” arrived. “Catherine” was 27 and lived in Nepean — much, much closer to home. She, too, had so-called “limits” of anything goes. And so did “Sam,” 26 and from Laval, whose “message” arrived about 2 1/2 hours later.

By this point, I was telling co-workers around me about the emails, my so-called profile of 5-4, 330 lbs., and the messages from these “women” who wanted to be mistresses. The disclosure to my co-workers was meant to be a pre-emptive strike, just in case. I wanted them to be witnesses in case my employer ever spotted Ashley Madison on my work email address and asked what the hell I was doing.

I also emailed the website after receiving Sam’s message, asking why it was sending material as I had never made contact with the company and didn’t want anything to do with the stuff. Ashley Madison’s reply came quickly.

“We apologize for the inconvenience this has brought you. Please be advised that in order to become a member, we require an email address. Members at times do not want to use their own email address and will create a different one. Sometimes these fake email addresses used to join the site are real and belong to other people. This is why you have been receiving emails from us; someone used your email address to join.

“This has now been resolved. The account associated with your email address has been deleted. You will no longer receive emails from AshleyMadison.com.”

I don’t know why anybody wanting to use Ashley Madison’s services would provide a phoney email address or somebody else’s, such as mine. That person wouldn’t get a reply as the correspondence would go to the email address provided. I think it’s very possible that the website may have acquired my address (it’s out there as I work for a fairly large newspaper) to see if it could lure me as a client.

Or it could be that somebody out there was trying to embarrass me for something I had written or refused to write about in my column, The Public Citizen.

But these unsolicited emails to me say one thing: People should not believe that every name they might see on the leaked list has any bearing on reality.

Take for example, the release this week of email addresses belonging to hundreds of Canadian federal, provincial and municipal government employees — part of huge leak of names of people purported to be Ashley Madison clients.

A story by the Canadian Press says Ashley Madison “does not send verification emails, meaning the accounts might not belong to actual users of the site and could simply be the work of disgruntled tricksters.”

The story said that while Ashley Madison’s parent company, Avid Life Media, indicated it was investigating the leak to determine if any information posted online was valid, it did not respond to a question as to why would-be clients or tricksters can register with unverified or fake email addresses.

Computer security expert Brian Krebs, who writes the KrebsOnSecurity blog, said in the CP story that “many of the leaked accounts appeared to be little more than a name and an email address, raising questions about their authenticity.”

Avid Life Media was not forthcoming with me, either, after I sent Ashley Madison another email this week, asking whether it could track down the person who used my email address. Avid Life Media replied: “In order to be able to provide information regarding this account, we require an official court ordered subpoena requesting any information required.

“This document MUST be hand-delivered to our office by a sheriff. If you are located outside of Toronto, your local authorities will need to contact Toronto authorities and have a sheriff from a local division hand deliver the document to us ...”

Maybe Team Impact would be willing to help.

It’s very possible that the website may have acquired my address ... it’s out there ... to see if it could lure me as a client.