All of the so-called “Vatican” Ashley Madison clients are Virginians or Canadians with fat fingers
In the week or so since the Ashley Madison hack data dump, there have been many news stories that have reported its contents uncritically, by journalists who have obviously never seen the data.
One of the characterizations of the data that has been bandied about is the fact that there were numerous e-mail addresses from the Vatican; and indeed, there were 3 from vatican.com and 219 with the .va suffix (as a nation, the Vatican gets its own two-letter top level domain).
However, even a casual perusal of these latter addresses reveals that something isn’t right. Does the Vatican have schools named after cities in Virginia or ISPs with the same names as those in Canada?
The answer is simple: There are plenty of addresses in Virginia that end in .va.us or .va.gov, and the people who signed up left off the end (Ashley Madison never verified e-mails, so people didn’t have to use a real one). And then because C and V are next to each other on the keyboard, some fat-fingered Canadians (a demofraphic to whuch I belomg) simply hit the wrong key.
I went through all 219 .va addresses someone kindly posted to Pastebin, and checked (with Google) to see if there were .va.us, .va.gov or .ca equivalents (there were also fat-fingered, forgetful Californians who typed .va instead of .ca.gov), and I’ve arranged the results here. There was only one e-mail address that did not have an equivalent (vatican.va), but that domain does not seem to exist (they use vatican.com instead). There were also 55 that I couldn’t link elsewhere, but that still did not appear to belong to the Vatican.
So here’s a lovely pie chart of the results (my peers hate pie charts, and I recognize their weaknesses, but they have the admirable advantage that everyone understands what they’re looking at) as well as a list of the 219 .va domains (I stripped the front part before the @ for privacy’s sake) reported from the Ashley Madison hack along with my categorizations, among which of course may be errors, I’m sadly human.
Disclaimer: I was brought up Catholic, but I totally rebelled, so I don’t have a vested interest in protecting the Vatican from scandal, quite the opposite. I just believe in accurate reporting.
The domains:
Domain Origin ======================== ======== abingdonus.va Virginia acps.k12.va Virginia alexandria.lib.va Virginia alleghany.k12.va Virginia alum.va Virginia apsva.va Virginia augusta.k12.va Virginia campbell.k12.va Virginia ccpsd.k12.va Virginia ci.grottoes.va Virginia ci.manassas.us.va Virginia ci.richmond.va Virginia ci.staunton.us.va Virginia ci.va Virginia city.suffolk.va Virginia city.va Virginia co.arlington.va Virginia co.campbell.va Virginia co.frederick.va Virginia co.henry.va Virginia co.roanoke.va Virginia cohenrico.va Virginia cvgs.k12.va Virginia edu.va Virginia edu.va Virginia edu.va Virginia edu.va Virginia edu.va Virginia floyd.k12.va Virginia gmail.k12.va Virginia henrico.k12.va Virginia henrico.k12.va Virginia henrico.k12.va Virginia hopewell.k12.va Virginia lcs.k12.va Virginia lcs.k12.va Virginia meck.k12.va Virginia med.va Virginia med.va Virginia med.va Virginia nn.k12.va Virginia nn.k12.va Virginia nn.k12.va Virginia nn.k12.va Virginia nn.k12.va Virginia nn.k12.va Virginia nps.k12.va Virginia nps.k12.va Virginia nps.k12.va Virginia patrick.k12.va Virginia powhatan.k12.va Virginia powhatan.k12.va Virginia pps.k12.va Virginia pps.k12.va Virginia rcs.k12.va Virginia richmond.k12.va Virginia richmond.k12.va Virginia richmond.k12.va Virginia russell.k12.va Virginia sootsylvania.k12.va Virginia student.hampton.k12.va Virginia student.hampton.k12.va Virginia waynesbror.k12.va Virginia wcs.k12.va Virginia wcs.k12.va Virginia wcs.k12.va Virginia wcs.k12.va Virginia lva.lib.va Virginia racsb.state.va Virginia rrj.state.va Virginia spotsyvania.va Virginia tax.state.va Virginia va.med.va Virginia vadoc.va Virginia vava.va Virginia vba.va Virginia vba.va Virginia albertahealthservices.ca Canada alpha.va Canada alumni.va Canada cgocable.va Canada dildo.va Canada dre.va Canada hot.va Canada hotmail.va Canada hotmail.va Canada hotmail.va Canada hotmail.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada live.va Canada luve.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail.va Canada mail3.va Canada mail3.va Canada mail5.va Canada ham.va Canada mx4.va Canada nao.va Canada pp.va Canada rainyday.va Canada sales.va Canada shaw.va Canada shaw.va Canada skola.va Canada skola.va Canada sympatico.va Canada videotron.va Canada videotron.va Canada videotron.va Canada wer.va Canada yahoo.com.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada yahoo.va Canada bulk.va Unknown gmail.com.www.va Unknown m01.va Unknown m01.va Unknown m01.va Unknown mobileemail.va Unknown mobileemail.va Unknown mobileemail.va Unknown mobileemail.va Unknown mobileemail.va Unknown mobileemail.va Unknown nfksfbfn.va Unknown owen.va Unknown owen.va Unknown owen.va Unknown owen.va Unknown owen.va Unknown owen2001.va Unknown sryrshrshrs.va Unknown student.va Unknown student.va Unknown student.va Unknown student.va Unknown student.va Unknown student.va Unknown student.va Unknown student.va Unknown utb.va Unknown utb.va Unknown v001.va Unknown v001.va Unknown v002.va Unknown v002.va Unknown v003.va Unknown v005.va Unknown v005.va Unknown v006.va Unknown v006.va Unknown v006.va Unknown v006.va Unknown v101.va Unknown v101.va Unknown v103.va Unknown 1999yahoo.com.va Unknown a.va Unknown atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California atlas.va California thevatican.va Fake