A prominent Irish politician is alleged to have registered with infidelity site Ashley Madison.
Newstalk.com has confirmed that the email address of one Irish TD is registered with the adult website.
However, it is not possible to say that the TD in question was definitely a customer of Ashley Madison because the firm did not email subscribers back to verify the email addresses used by users during sign-up.
That means another customer could have used this TD's email address.
Admissions by high-profile users like ultra conservative Christian Josh Duggar in the US that he was registered and did have affairs lend legitimacy to the data being released.
The message we got on entering the TD's email address onto checking service Trustify
A hackivist's dream
Ashley Madison was hacked by an online activist group Impact Group earlier this summer.
The hackers threatened Canadian holding company Avid Life Media with release of the data they had acquired, if the owners failed to shut down the website.
Avid Life did not shut down the website and this week two massive batches of information were published online by the hackers.
Irish users
There is speculation among users on Reddit today that almost 125,000 Irish people were using Ashley Madison.
Customers using email addresses that ended in .ie reportedly numbered some 14,000 and included people using University of Limerick and Trinity email addresses.
TheJournal.ie reports evidence that people using email addresses linked to RTÉ, the HSE, three government departments, the Defence Forces and An Garda Síochána all had accounts.
Defences given
Two Republican politicians in the States have come forward since the hack, admitting their details are among the millions released.
One said he had registered while carrying out opposition research.
The other said he had signed up for a joke, but hadn't returned to the site in the five years that have passed since then.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, married MP Michelle Thomson - whose details are also included in the dump - says she has been the victim of a smear campaign.
Monetising fear
Some entreprenurial sites are using the security breach as a way to make money.
A screen grab of file names in the recent dump as published on Wired
Companies like Trustify can find out if a user's information is contained in the data dump, and will investigate further for payment.
Trustify's selling point is that those who have been 'exposed' in the hack run the risk of encountering problems at home, at work, with the bank or "anything else where a background check is required".
If you know the email address of the person you are curious about, the service is easy to use.
But just as quickly as these companies are popping up, Avid Media is working to shut them down.
One of the most popular sites people were using to check for hack data was CheckAshleyMadison.com, which was shut down last night amid breach of copyright claims.
