(Bloomberg) – Adultery website AshleyMadison.com's owner agreed to pay a steeply discounted $1.65 million settlement to resolve state and federal probes into a 2015 hack that exposed personal data of 37 million users of the site, whose slogan was "Life is Short. Have an Affair."

|

'Inability to pay'

The company, which changed its name to Ruby Corp. from Avid Life Media Inc. after the breach, agreed to a $17.5 million penalty to resolve the multistate investigation, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement. The amount was reduced by about 90 percent due to an "inability to pay," and the rest was suspended.

"Reckless disregard for data security will not be tolerated," Schneiderman, who joined with 12 other U.S. states and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to announce the settlement.

Hackers dumped almost 10 gigabytes of data on the Internet, providing information on previously anonymous users, including email addresses, names and details of sexual preferences and fantasies, authorities said. As many as 652,627 New York residents were members of Ashley Madison at the time of the security breach.

|

Dating venue

Toronto-based Ruby, which now bills Ashley Madison simply as an online-dating site, has been cooperating with the FTC for more than a year, according to a statement by Rob Segal, the company's chief executive officer since July.

Recommended For You

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader

Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.