Ashley Madison to Pay $11 Million Settlement for 2015 Data Breach Case

The parent company of the secretive dating website Ashley Madison is set to pay out $11 million to the victims of the site’s 2015 data breach.

Business Insider reports that the parent company of the secretive dating company which encouraged its users to cheat on their significant other, Ashley Madison, has been told to pay out $11 million to victims of the site’s scandalous 2015 data breach which leaked the personal information of many users to the Internet. The owner of the website, Ruby Corp, announced on Friday that $11.2 million will be paid out to the 37 million users affected by the breach in order to settle a case brought against the company.

Ruby Corp denied any wrongdoing in the case and agreed to a preliminary class-action settlement which is currently awaiting approval by a federal judge in St. Louis. The Ashley Madison website, which had the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair,” cost Ruby more than a quarter of its revenue when the data breach took place. The company previously paid $1.6 million to settle a probe by the FTC and several states who were investigating the company for poor data security and deceptive practices.

Users affected by the data breach can reportedly claim up to $3,500 from Ruby Corp depending on to what degree they can attribute losses to the data breach. A former federal judge who helped to mediate the settlement described it as, “a valuable recovery for the class in the face of many obstacles.” Court papers also show that lawyers may receive up to a third of the $11.2 million for payment of legal fees. The case filing is titled Ashley Madison Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Missouri, No. 15-md-02669.