Ashley Madison hack could bite clients who used government e-mail

For some of the thousands of people who used their work e-mail addresses to sign up on the website — including more than a few in government — the fallout could spill over to their professional lives.

A Chronicle review of the data dump found that scores of California residents used e-mail accounts issued to them by city, county and state agencies as well as public schools and universities.

There are prison guards, professors, safety regulators, court employees and cops.

While security experts believe the data to be authentic, it’s possible that some accounts were created with phony e-mail addresses.

Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the state corrections department, said a quick scan of the list of agency employees with purported Ashley Madison accounts appeared to reveal fake e-mails.

Hundreds of U.S. government workers — including many with sensitive jobs in the White House and the Justice Department — used Internet connections from inside federal offices to log onto Ashley Madison, according to the Associated Press.

E-mail addresses linked to military personnel have also raised concerns.

The Marine Corps is investigating hundreds of e-mail accounts in the hacked data linked to the Ashley Madison site and an affiliated site, Established Men, which promises to connect beautiful women with wealthy men, said U.S. Marine Corps spokesman Maj. Christian Devine in a statement.

Rhode said many people don’t think anything of doing Christmas shopping online while at work, or responding to work e-mails on their own time from their home computer.

A California state employee whose information was exposed by the hack told The Chronicle that he may have created the profile on Ashley Madison, “but I can certainly say definitely I never used the services.”

The hackers warned Avid Life Media, the owner of Ashley Madison, that if the sites weren’t shut down, the group would 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 e-mails.”

The engines made it easy for companies and government agencies to search for employees, if they had the inclination.