Now that the sniggers have died down and the jokes fallen flat, it is time to grasp the enormity of what the hacking of dating site Ashley Madison’s database has wrought. It isn’t just the numbers, though a compromise involving 38 million people across the globe is also a numerical disaster. The legal cases, the potential break-ups, the shame, the guilt and even the possibility of suicide deaths related to the outing of people who registered on the site, add up to a human tragedy so profound that it could re-engineer our society.

At its core, the Ashley Madison hack isn’t only about adultery or about terrible spouses or even about dating sites. It is also about digital security and the betrayal of trust.

Sharing private data in the public sphere, whether it is under the safeguard of a company or even a government agency, is fraught with dangers. Right now, the focus expectedly is on Ashley Madison and other similar dating sites. But in reality every site that collects data on its users—and all of them, Facebook, Twitter, Google included, do that—is equally vulnerable to such theft.

Ashley Madison, of course, flouted every rule in the digital playbook, lacking even the basics needed to protect such sensitive data. What’s more, it was apparently also cheating its paying customers by creating fake accounts with exciting profiles. But its big failure, to permanently delete data, may yet be an unresolved dilemma for even the big boys of the web and mobility world. Three months ago, AdultFriendFinder, another dating site, was hacked and data such as sexual preferences, email addresses and usernames of nearly four million user accounts leaked online. The leaked data also included deleted accounts of users.

But that or similar hacks of corporate and financial sites in the past haven’t caused quite the stir that this latest hack has, which points to a terrible truth about us. With the leaks, our behaviour towards people whose private lives were suddenly put out in the public glare, acquired the nature of what one writer memorably called crowdsourced punishment.

The Hindu fanatics who pulled young revellers, including girls, out of pubs in Mangalore to humiliate them, could be ignored and condemned as relics of an antiquated past. To most people they are no different from the beasts at ISIS who deny gays the right to life.

But what about the digerati that picked up the stones when the first names from the site appeared on the web? The outrage and vigilantism that followed showed that when it comes to mocking the apparent flaws of other people, we still remain the bloodthirsty mobs of yore.

To say that the 38 million people who were registered on the site had it coming is both wrong and indefensible. The data included profiles of people, transcripts of their chats and mails. A huge mass of private data with the potential to destroy so many lives is like a thermonuclear device in the hands of a rogue state. It is no surprise that within days of the data being dumped on the web the first instances of blackmail and extortion started. It is also the perfect setting for settling old and new grudges. Lest we forget the dirtbag user database included women as well, which points to a larger sociological issue than we may be ready to accept. If indeed so many people sought companionship outside of their more socially accepted unions, it may just be crying out for a reset on how we view marriage and its concomitant commitments.

Nor did the hacker group, Impact Team, which stole the data, do it as a service to anyone (in the way that Wikileaks did when it uncovered secret data from government files). This also places in serious jeopardy the move towards increasing levels of transparency and openness within companies. One theory is that the hack was the fallout of a disgruntled employee sharing vital database access details with the hackers.

The dilemma of balancing employee trust with the trust of customers is sure to now exercise companies. The sleaze embedded into the Ashley Madison issue shouldn’t deflect from the real issue of hacking of personal data. If 38 million customers of a bank had been similarly robbed of their lifetime savings would our response have been to blame them?

The impulse to share bits and pieces of one’s life is quintessentially human. The schadenfreude of those of us who are not on the site or not exposed yet mocks this need while ignoring the larger truth it conceals.

Is privacy in the online world becoming more vulnerable? Tell us at views@livemint.com

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