The release of customer information from the AshleyMadison.com cheating site yielded more than 15,000 e-mail addresses hosted by government and military servers, including a couple of dozen from Georgia governments.
Four metro Atlanta governments and the Georgia Department of Transportation domain addresses were among those found in the lists.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution checked with local governments who had some employees’ email addresses listed on the site.
Officials said they are investigating.
Here are their responses:
• Melissa Mullinax, a senior adviser to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed: “Using a government email for such endeavors would be a violation of the city’s IT policy.” Mullinax said the city has confirmed with an outside threat-intelligence vendor that up to eight email addresses involved in the breach could belong to Atlanta workers. The city has not yet learned the names of those employees but expects to in coming days.
• DeKalb County spokesman Burke Brennan via email: “County emails should not be used for personal purposes such as this. We’re investigating.”
• A Georgia DOT spokeswoman noted that while three DOT email addresses were used to register accounts with AshleyMadison.com, internal controls block the website from the DOT network. If a DOT employee registered with his or her state email address, it was not done from a state computer, she said.
• Fayette County Commissioner Steve Brown: “That’s about as stupid as it gets. It’s not very smart to use a government address for anything else. Anything you do using that address is subject to the Open Record’s law.”
Brown said he was not previously aware of the site but said county officials would likely have the county’s information technology department investigate the matter. “We’d make sure it’s not someone who is a victim of a hoax.” “I’d take it with a grain of salt until research nails the person behind the addresses,” Brown added.
• Lindsey Wiles, city of Marietta spokeswoman via email: “The City is aware of the situation and is currently investigating the report that stated mariettaga.gov domain email addresses were used for this website.
“At this time we are investigating the validity of both the database and the email addresses used.”
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