AshleyMadison.com, a dating website for married people seeking affairs, was hacked last night by a group or individuals known as The Impact Team.

The team hacked into the company’s user databases and financial records, threatening to release personal data of the company’s 37 million “anonymous” customers if the website is not taken down. So far the group has released at least 40 megabytes of data (including credit card information) and will reveal more each day until the website is removed.

“Avid Life Media has been instructed to take Ashley Madison and Established Men offline permanently in all forms, or we will release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers’ secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses, and employee documents and emails,” wrote the Impact Team.

The Impact Team claims it has data on all of Ashley Madison's 37 million users and its partner sites, Cougar Life and Established Men, all owned by Canada's Avid Life Media (ALM).

“A significant percentage of the population is about to have a very bad day, including many rich and powerful people,” said the hackers. The leak is still unfolding and thus the nightmare is nowhere near over for the hookup service, whose slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair.”

“We’re not denying this happened,” said Noel Biderman, President of Avid Life Media and founder and CEO of Ashley Madison. “Like us or not, this is still a criminal act.”

As of now, Biderman says ALM is working to remove the posts related to the incident as well as any “Personally identifiable information about users published online." ALM will continue to investigate the incident and provide updates to users regarding their cyber security.

The hackers are mostly working to reveal the “lie” ALM tells its customers regarding a $19 service called Full Delete, which lets members completely erase their profile and user information from the site’s database. "If you want to leave no trace you were here, we can recall everything — every image, text message you ever sent," claims the company.

According to the hacking group, “Full Delete netted ALM 1.7 million dollars in revenue in 2014. It’s also a complete lie. Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed.”

Ashley Madison’s leak follows a similar breach that occurred to Adult FriendFinder in March. Adult FriendFinder had 3.5 million customer records (of its approx. 64 million members) exposed by an unnamed hacker. Those records contained email addresses, usernames, passwords, birthdays, zip codes and descriptions of sexual preferences—all similar information found in user profiles on Ashley Madison.

The company had announced plans for an IPO (Initial Public Offering) in London later this year with the hope of raising as much as $200 million by going public. These plans may be in jeopardy following the breach.

The leak also has political implications--59,000 Ashley Madison customers reside in the District of Columbia. According to the Washington Post, "10.4 percent of District-based users also reside in one neighborhood: Capitol Hill," which is the well-known home to many of the nation’s "most powerful and influential politicians, journalists, congressional staffers, political activists, and lobbyists."

Just how big is the site? Beyond its 37 million members, CEO Biderman claims, "I sign up 35,000 people a day. I get 120 million visitors a month. There are 1.2 million communications sent on my platform every day." Ashley Madison also operates in 48 countries and in 19 different languages, perhaps because cheating is "universal" and cross-cuts all cultures.

"Cheating is like the secret glue that keeps millions of marriages together. I would cheat before I would leave," says Biderman, who is married with two children but believes that humans are just not "engineered for monogamy."

When asked if he's ever personally cheated, he said, "I did when I was younger and in college. Isn't that what college is for — being an idiot?" Well let's hope not.