By Ed Silverstein, From Legaltech News

Seeking at least $3 million in damages, the lawsuit was brought in Arizona federal court by three unnamed plaintiffs.

Following a flurry of litigation against Ashley Madison’s parent company Avid Life Media, a new lawsuit is pending against GoDaddy, Amazon Web Services and other data hosting providers. Seeking at least $3 million in damages, the lawsuit was brought in Arizona federal court for three unnamed plaintiffs who say the web services inflicted “emotional distress upon Ashley Madison users,” with lackadaisical security that has left them vulnerable to extortion.

The plaintiffs are seeking a court order requiring the removal of the websites, in addition to monetary damages to compensate them for their losses.

An earlier Canadian lawsuit focused on allegations related to Ashley Madison’s failure to properly secure hacked information from the adultery website, but the new suit relates to the theft of private consumer data from the site.

“The purpose of the lawsuit is to stop the ongoing harm resulting from the operation of these illegal, for-profit websites and to seek redress for the harm these websites have already caused,” Ginny Sanderson, an attorney at Kronenberger Rosenfeld, which is representing the unnamed plaintiffs, told Legaltech News. “The Plaintiffs are victims of theft. Sensitive personal information, like tangible property, enjoys the same protections (if not more, in some instances) under state and federal law. The Impact Team hackers stole Plaintiffs’ sensitive personal information, but the Defendants in our case are a few of the bad actors who took that stolen property and made it readily available online—for a fee, of course.”

The lawsuit further notes that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has “issued a restraining order requiring several websites and Internet service providers to immediately disable the Ashley Madison data.”

Also, by “continuing to host and publish the stolen data despite their knowledge of the pain and damage it is causing to those involved, these bad actors are intentionally inflicting emotional distress upon Ashley Madison users,” the new lawsuit said. Two suicides were possibly connected to the release of the Ashley Madison data.

Even though they are not named, the plaintiffs are former users of the Ashley Madison website, who were “gravely affected by the stolen data and are now subject to threats and extortion,” the lawsuit said.

On the other hand, the defendants are the website operators and Internet Service Providers who “are hosting the stolen data to facilitate public searches, often for a fee,” the suit adds.

In response to the suit, one of the named defendants, GoDaddy, said in a statement to Legaltech News, “We haven’t been served, and we don’t comment on pending litigation.” Amazon Web Services did not respond to a request for an immediate comment.

Last month, a lawsuit was filed against Ashley Madison’s parent company for failing to protect the sensitive data of clients and for falsely advertising services it claimed would remove all record of use from company databases. That lawsuit seeks $578 million in damages. Canadian authorities continue to investigate the publication of leaked personal data from as many as 40 million users that were taken from the Ashley Madison site.

For more on this story go to: http://www.legaltechnews.com/id=1202736705430/Amazon-Web-Services-GoDaddy-Named-In-Ashley-Madison-Related-Litigation#ixzz3lLgRFCza

See also iNews Cayman related stories with link published September 2 2015 “How many Ashley Madison users were flirting with fembots?” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/how-many-ashley-madison-users-were-flirting-with-fembots/