Indiana

South Bend, Mishawaka government email domains linked to Ashley Madison data hack

The government email domains for the city of South Bend and city of Mishawaka may be among those registered to AshleyMadison.com and released in a recent dump of data that hackers say they took from the website.

Four @southbend.in.gov addresses and one @mishawaka.in.gov address were included in an unverified list of domains connected to the cheating site that was posted online earlier this week. The domains were included in the list but the specific email addresses were not.

The list includes dozens of domains connected to Indiana state and city government email domains, including the Indiana State Police, the Indiana Department of Correction and the attorney general’s office, according to the Indianapolis Star.

When asked about the domains on the list, Kara Kelly, a spokeswoman for the city of South Bend, said that “the city is looking into the matter, but cannot comment on personnel issues.”

The South Bend city employee handbook forbids the use of city computers and email accounts for private purposes, but the handbook applies only to hired employees and not elected officials.

Lawrence Meteiver, the Mishawaka city attorney, said “the city investigating the issue.”

AshleyMadison.com is a dating site that connects people interested in having an affair. The website says it has about 39 million users (though about 32 million were included in the hack). The website doesn’t verify email addresses, so it’s possible that users could enter someone else’s email address when creating an account on the site.

Because of that, it may be difficult to prove from an email address online that a person was indeed a user of the site.

Read more about the list of Indiana domains in the full story from the Indianapolis Star.

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