The company behind dating site Ashley Madision, Avid Life Media, has issued a statement putting to rest some of the issues its users have been afraid of:
No current or past members’ full credit card numbers were stolen from Avid Life Media. Any statements to the contrary are false. Avid Life Media has never stored members’ full credit card numbers.
That doesn’t mean that the dump of data that we reported on earlier isn’t embarrassing and an absolute disaster for the company and its users. It’s also still a major security risk, as other information such as full names and addresses are included in the databases.
Tons of sites are popping up to allow you to search for email addresses that were contained in the data dump, but the company apparently didn’t verify email addresses, so don’t take any extreme actions based on what you find.
The fallout from this is going to be felt for many weeks and months to come, and loudly, especially if famous folks, politicians or anyone else in the public eye ends up in the news for being on the site.