More than 4,700 Singapore e-mails found in Ashley Madison data leak
Last week, hackers fulfilled their promise to expose the personal information of more than 32 million members of adultery website Ashley Madison.
The hack has had wide-ranging consequences, especially in the US and Canada, where two suicides have been linked to the leak.
The New Paper combed through the data and found 4,751 e-mail addresses with the ".sg" suffix — which indicates a Singapore domain address.
These include addresses ending in ".com.sg" and 38 ".edu.sg" e-mail addresses. The ".edu.sg" suffix typically means the address belongs to students, teachers and faculty members of local education institutions.
However, it must be noted that Ashley Madison does not require a verification of the e-mail, which means anyone can enter an e-mail address, even if he or she doesn't own it.
Mr Justin Tan, an associate lawyer in Trident Law Group, said it is illegal to use someone else’s e-mail address to register for services under the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act
Some e-mail addresses listed on the site are also said to be fake. Ashley Madison does not require valid e-mail addresses.
There were two “.gov.sg” e-mail addresses in the leaked data, one of which bore the ‘cpib.gov.sg’ domain. But a spokesman for the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) clarified that the address did not exist in its system.
Read the full report in our print edition on Aug 27.
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