The alleged hacking of Ashley Madison is bad news. It isn't just bad for the 37 million people who are now about to be exposed as having logged onto a site whose slogan is "Life is short. Have an affair". This hack threatens the peace and stability of their families. The fabric of millions of relationships will be ripped apart. In the short term this will benefit restaurants, florists and divorce lawyers, but the hack shows how the internet has changed society beyond our comprehension or control.Whether you hold that these men and women are the architects of their own misery who deserve everything that's coming, or you couldn't care less about the private lives of strangers, the power of individuals to disrupt the lives of millions is horrifying. Never before have we had the means by which one or two people could infiltrate privacy. A string of code can unpick lies the world over. Keystrokes can reveal our intimate thoughts, dreams, and fears.To those with the tools to see, we have created a world of glass walls and transparent envelopes. A generation has grown up believing that these walls are solid, and people who know no better trust that they enjoy a shell of privacy around their actions on the internet. Systems designed to be safer and more discreet, sites like Ashley Madison, should have made such privacy easier. The internet held the promise of finding like-minded people, sharing thoughts and feelings in honesty unconstrained by proximity. Children have grown into adults sharing their medical problems, sexual fantasies and innermost vulnerabilities with a technology they do not understand.This generation living, flirting and lying on the internet is in for many more awful surprises in the coming years. It isn't just the recklessness when it comes to privacy, it is also the way in which these revelations will normalise behaviour that was first properly facilitated by the internet.What the internet was supposed to make more private, it is more likely to make public. We have long been able to present a better, cleaner, tidier version of ourselves. The generation growing up with SnapShot, finding romance online, messaging the snarky private views of their work colleagues may be the first to lose that gap between their outer and inner selves. The mask is being removed by those with the knowledge and malicious intent to undo the knots.Soon these criminal hackers will enjoy not just distributed currency and distributed networks but software and servers that are built to withstand the most significant of government interventions.Within a few decades we have given to servers the information that could undermine our lives, uploaded to systems that are leaky. It is impossible to predict what the fallout of this shift in our behaviour will be, but it is likely the toll will include heartbreak, violence and despair.The internet didn't invent adultery, duplicity or criminality. Technology just seemed like it might make such things easier. In that sense, the early promise of the internet was a lie. What follows is anyone's guess. The users of Ashley Madison and their loved ones are among the first to wake up to this unpleasant reality. They will not be the last.End of L'affaireIn France, the home of adultery, the hacking of AshleyMadison.com amounts to the end of civilisation as we know it. Forget Edward Snowden, this is the breach to really shock the free world.I can only imagine what must be going through the minds of the hundreds of thousands of French members of cheating sites.It's not that, should similar exposure occur, they fear being damned for their extra-marital affairs. The key point in France is that, when it comes to cheating, everyone must remain discreet.Lying is the accepted way of things, including for the betrayed spouse. The French could not see what Bill Clinton, to name one celebrated two-timer, had done wrong. "Of course he lied," we shrugged. "That's what a gentleman does."We understand that the point of adultery is not to break up a marriage, but to spice it up. Straying a little more often than not reminds you that everyone must make an effort in a marriage. Covering your tracks and making up in silence for your little walk on the wild side works far better than the vastly overrated Anglo-Saxon sin of sincerity at all costs. To us, before being your lover, your wife is your greatest ally and best friend, and you don't want to hurt your best friend.There are no words more grim a Frenchwoman (or man) can hear than "We need to talk", for, the reasoning goes, as long as your partner lies about what is really nothing more than a peccadillo, he or she still wants to stay in the marriage. The minute they own up, it's over.Anne-Elisabeth Moutet..