A Boston magazine review of emails related to the Ashley Madison leak revealed that at least five Boston City Hall email acounts and others related to Massachusetts municipalities were used to set up accounts on the adultery website.
Other cities and towns in the state where government domains were used included Framingham, Leominster, Lowell, Newton, Norwood and Somerville. A user with a Boston Police Department email domain was also found in the data.
Boston magazine did not reveal the names of the users, citing ethical reasons.
Ashley Madison marketed itself as the premier venue for cheating spouses before data stolen by hackers started spreading across the Internet earlier this week. The prospect of finding the name of a loved one or an acquaintance amid the site's more than 35 million registered members has drawn strong interest worldwide.
Websites devoted to checking emails against the leaked data appeared to be experiencing heavy traffic. Forums such as Reddit — the user-powered news and discussion site — carried stories of anguished husbands and wives confronting their partners after finding their data among the massive dump of information.
