“...security experts quickly noted that there were 15,000 .mil or .gov e-mail addresses among those used for the site.”
I’m sure many of those are fakes, but I’m also sure a lot of those used their work emails to avoid snooping into their private emails.
The .edu ones could be fun, too.
The hand-wringing about loss of privacy on the web by the author is just icing on the cake.
is surely due to the number of WaPo editors' addresses to be found in the data dump.
This would be inconceivably stupid. Work email, particularly .gov email is snooped a lot closer than private email. If you don't want your private email snooped, you set up another private email address.
Email verification was never required to sign up to Ashley Madison. An email address was requested to sign up but it didn't have to be a real one. You could sign up with a fake one, or someone else's email address if you wanted.