Breached Ashley Madison Users Can Sue — If They Admit Who They Are

Good news and bad news for those whose data was breached in the hack of adulterous dating website Ashley Madison. The goods news: They can sue. The bad news: The 42 plaintiffs in the case are going to have to make their names known if they want to continue in their class action lawsuit.

The group is suing because they allege that Ashley Madison’s lack of proper safeguarding caused their personal information to be compromised in a hack that left 32 million users exposed. Ashley Madison also offers a paid “full delete” service, though the hacker(s) helpfully revealed that those names remained on the company’s servers.

All plaintiffs in the case thus far are listed as John Does because they had initially been allowed to file in court without using their names. The lawyers for the class later motioned to make the anonymity a permanent feature in order “to reduce the risk of potentially catastrophic personal and professional consequences that could befall them and their families.”

U.S. District Court Judge John Ross said no, noting that while rape and sexual abuse victims or those whose cases touch on certain socially sensitive issues, like AIDS or LGBT rights, have in the past been granted anonymity during court proceedings, the fact that these users voluntarily signed on with the site meant they were not entitled to such protection.

Avid Life Media (Ashley Madison’s parent company) further argued that information about the plaintiffs “do not constitute information of the utmost intimacy so as to require anonymity.”

The judge further noted that the 42 complainants in the case should be identified since they are a subset of a much larger class. Those who want to remain anonymous can later join the suit with the named parties, though the reward they’ll get if they win will be less.

If all, or the majority, of the 42 complainants drop out, Judge Ross has said he will revisit the ruling.