Five things we learned from 'cheating website' hacking scandal

Extramarital dating website AshleyMadison.com, which is (in)famous for the tagline, "Life is short. Have an affair", is in the middle of a slugfest over a hacking scandal that threatens to expose all 37 million of its user profiles - mostly forty-somethings with a rock on their ring fingers!

The cyber vandals, or cyber warriors, whichever way you want to look at them, have raised the storm in a D-cup, as it were, taking Ashley Madison to task over the surreptitious "deletion fee" - a paltry $19 - that the adultery website had been demanding for supposedly permanent removal of clandestine profiles, or "full delete", but with data on the very real online financial transactions still intact.

According to The Impact Team, the internet hacker group threatening Ashley Madison with the exposé, contrary to popular perception, Avid Life Media (ALM, or the parent company owning the adultery website, along with a string of portals offering similar facilities) has not been discarding the purchase details once "full delete" has been availed, retaining sensitive information like real name and address, as well as credit card details.

So, here are five life lessons for the desperate housewives, sugar daddies, cougar moms and Don Drapers of Cyberistan, absolutely tax free!

Fifty Shades of Grey in virtual world isn't always hunky-dory

We all know how "mama porn" has been a prime mover and shaker behind the ELJamesification of the universe, but the cyberland is not a 10-page commandment with 30-page annexure of pure sex drawn up by a Christian Grey. It's ugly, with potential fornicators also, equally, being potential embarrassments. And in case you are leaving crumbs of your online-offline dalliances online and offline, you can kiss goodbye the flimsy veil of protection that a website seems to wear, just because, you know, it's a website.  

Numbers can get mixed up

You have been flaunting numbers. 36C, 7 inch, 38D, 7.5 inch. No way can anyone crosscheck those, without, you know, crosschecking you! Scintillating, right? Nope! Because there are other, very significant, numbers involved here. Such as the 16-digit magical series that is the password to all your hard-earned (okay, pun intended) monies! And the number that is a dead giveaway on Google Street View, pointing out, with GPS-dropping accuracy, the exact location of your non-sexy, non-clandestine, very real and very boring self. It's the number that, with a little help from the internet, can tell almost anyone with minimum cybersecurity skills, if you need a change of underwear.     

Anonymity is great, until it isn't

So you thought you will hide behind the hide. Of Don Draper. Or Dorian Gray. Or, you know, if you are in the United Kingdom, Oscar Wilde. Even Tony Blair. (Yes, there are women and men who fancy Blair, and I don't mean Islamophobic hockey moms in search of some Zero Dark Thirty salvation!) But all the "discreet" charm, promised hitherto, giving you almost a Luis Bunuel kind of a naughty bourgeoisie halo, can turn into discreet harm in a matter of seconds. One wrong click, one window not minimised at the nick of time, one pop-up not blocked, one webcam not closed - and your cover is blown. Literally.

It's not morality silly, it's a cyber condom

Oh please! Don't for a second imagine that a lesson in "Thou Shall Not" is at the heart of this vortex of untimely indisposition. Hardly. (Okay, pun intended. Not!) Please, feel free to go ahead and swap, swing, stagger, slurp or linger, lick, loiter, lurk in the corridors of your extramarital imagination. This is not a covert advertisement for a company that sells you blood diamonds and keeps the Catholic Church or the Hindu Marriage Act intact. No such intentions. This is also not a manifesto for monogamy! Do indulge and spread your polyandric/polygamous  pheromones as much as you like. Let Charles Darwin rule, like Jackie Collins, Harold Robbins, even Mills and Boons, the kingdom of your netherland. Anyone can be the Lawrence of your labia, just as long as you put a lid on it. But just how will you ensure that you have the cyber condom on at all times? Right. You can't. Eh, are you that risk-averse, now?

Try going off the grid for the 'real' thing

Listen up, all you homo sapiens elctronicus, the corporations are minting money off your coitus - past, present and future. You dumbf%cks, hark. Why let a board of capitalist sharks feast on the recently un-starved rump of your romance? Why leave trails of your heavy petting online? You marauding macaques, give this a good hear. If you really, really want to have fun: just shut down your godforsaken laptops, palmtops and other hands-on devices with tentacles that eavesdrop on your copulatory chorus and intimate interludes. Why do you want the NSA to know (or Google, Facebook, Twitter, Ashley Madison, who will eventually vomit it out to NSA) what you are doing, in or out of the marital bed. Just get off the grid, lads, ladies. Go get a life. Or ruin one. Your f%cking choice!