1 out of 13 Hamiltonians is on infidelity site Ashley Madison: analyst
Multiple city of Hamilton and McMaster University emails included
About 1 out every 13 Hamiltonians registered on the infidelity dating service Ashley Madison, according to a data analysed by Dadaviz.com.
That's 40,096 people, which ranks the city ninth at 7.7 per cent in Canada behind Winnipeg, Vancouver and Ottawa.
Of the valid Hamilton emails released in the hack, 20 use Hamilton.ca addresses, an email address used by city employees, and 94 use McMaster.ca email addresses that could belong to faculty, staff or students.
Here's how the national numbers break down:
Data posted online Tuesday claimed to contain the personal details of more than 37 million users of the infamous website. Some GPS data related to where people logged into their accounts was also released, giving a snapshot by area.
However, the site does not send verification emails, which means there is a chance specific accounts don't actually belong to the email in question. The data leak also goes back to 2004, which means some email addresses might not still be operational.
Site analyst Jishai Evers told CBC News that Hamilton has a 33 per cent ratio of invalid accounts.
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Last month, a group calling itself The Impact Team said it had hacked the self-described infidelity dating service and threatened to release its customers' names online unless Avid Life Media, the site's owners, shut it down. A message posted by the hackers accuses the company of deceit and incompetence, claiming that "the site is a scam with thousands of fake female profiles."
On Tuesday, the group posted what appeared to be the credit card numbers and other sensitive information of Ashley Madison's customers online.
Avid Life Media has not confirmed validity of the data, but in a statement Tuesday it was "actively monitoring and investigating this situation to determine the validity of any information posted online."
However, sources have confirmed to CBC News that the data is from the July hack.
The data reportedly appeared first on the dark web, accessible only to people using specific browsers, but has since apparently spread to more visible areas the Internet.