The Ashley Madison website promises its 37million members worldwide - including 1.2million in the UK - complete 'anonymity' and has the motto: ‘Life is short. Have an affair.’
But a group calling themselves the 'Impact Team' have threatened to publish names, credit card details and 'secret sexual fantasies' of all members.
They believe the website wrecks marriages and have told owners they will start publishing intimate details about users unless the site, known as the 'Google of cheating', is shut down.
Impact Team say Ashley Madison members should not have anonymity because they are 'cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion.'
One British user, called Natalie, is one of the 1.2million scared her husband will discover her infidelity. She says that she started using the site during a 'rocky patch' in her marriage, but has not logged since 2011.
She told The Sun: 'Things with my husband improved and I haven't logged in to the website in years. Now I feel sick to my stomach that my past could come back to haunt me'.
Experts have warned the stolen data could be sold on to criminal gangs or used to blackmail members.
The cyber criminals have already published a small amount of the information online, and say they will continue divulging the secrets of Ashley Madison’s would-be adulterers until the service is closed for good.
The hackers have claimed that even cheaters who have paid Ashley Madison to delete their information from its files are at risk.
Ashley Madison believe the hacker may have been helped by an insider.
The anti-affair group said in a statement: 'Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers' secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails.'
The website charges members £12 for what it claims is a ‘full delete’. However, the hackers said this service was a ‘complete lie’.
‘Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed,’ they said.
It will be of note that the so-called Impact Team have billed themselves as MORAL HACKERS who want to expose infidelity and corruption in the WORLD.
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