‘Suicides’ over Ashley Madison hack

TORONTO – At least two people may have committed suicide following the hacking of the Ashley Madison cheating website that exposed the information of clients, Toronto police said on Monday.

Avid Life Media Inc, the parent company of the website, is offering a C$500,000 ($379,132) reward to catch the hackers, police said.

In addition to the exposure of the Ashley Madison accounts of as many as 37 million users, the attack on the infidelity website has sparked extortion attempts and at least two unconfirmed suicides, Toronto Police Acting Staff Superintendent Bryce Evans told a news conference.

The data dump contained email addresses of U.S. government officials, UK civil servants, and workers at European and North American corporations, taking already deep-seated fears about Internet security and data protection to a new level.

Police declined to provide any more details on the apparent suicides, saying they received unconfirmed reports on Monday morning.

“The social impact behind this (hacking) – we’re talking about families. We’re talking about their children, we’re talking about their wives, we’re talking about their male partners,” Bryce told reporters.

“It’s going to have impacts on their lives. We’re now going to have hate crimes that are a result of this. There are so many things that are happening. The reality is ... this is not the fun and games that has been portrayed.”