Police Investigate Suicides Potentially Linked To Ashley Madison Hack

Canadian detectives are investigating the unconfirmed suicides of two Ashley Madison clients, after a team of hackers released the personal information of 32m users.

The police made the announcement about the ongoing investigation at a news conference at Toronto Police Headquarters earlier today.

The hackers, known as The Impact Team, dumped the large cache of data on the Dark Web last week, claiming to have released the names, addresses, credit card data and phone numbers of Ashley Madison’s users.

Police are urging hack victims to review their bank accounts, after Ashley Madison confirmed credit card data was amongst the stolen files.

The stolen data also included sensitive financial records and data from the adultery site’s parent company, Avid Life Media (ALM).

The Toronto-based owner is now offering a $500,000 (£240,000) reward for any substantial information leading to the identification and arrest of the hackers.

Toronto Police have created a Twitter account, along with the hashtag “#AMcaseTPS” to collect any information related to the hack.

Bryce Evans, acting staff superintendent said: “As of this morning we have two unconfirmed reports of suicides associated with the leak of Ashley Madison’s customers’ profiles.”

Evans also noted that the hack has triggered a string of “spin-offs of crimes and further victimisation”.

He added: “This hack is one of the largest data breaches in the world and is very unique on its own in that it exposed tens of millions of people’s personal information.”

We will update this post as more information is released.

For more information about the hack, click here.