The release of stolen data from Ashley Madison, a dating website marketed at would-be adulterers, promises to roil the marital lives of its members.

It has also underscored the troubling limitations of Internet privacy.

On Tuesday, hackers appeared to make good on a threat to release what they said was 9.7 gigabytes of account and credit card information from 37 million users of the site.

What information was released?

The data includes members’ names, user names, addresses, phone numbers and birth dates as well as details of credit card transactions. Member passwords are encrypted, but specific users could be easily targeted for decryption, according to Quartz.

Profiles filled out by users could also contain embarrassing information about their sexual preferences.

The breach also included users of Established Men, a separate site aimed at women looking to date rich men. Both sites are owned by Avid Life Media.

Is the information verified?

Cybersecurity experts are indicating that the data appears to be genuine, but that doesn’t mean all of the information is reliable.

Owner of cheating website Ashley Madison confirms data leak

Brian Krebs, a security researcher, said in a blog post that he spoke with three people who found their information and the last four digits of their credit card numbers in the database, suggesting they were indeed stolen from the company.

“I’m sure there are millions of AshleyMadison users who wish it weren’t so, but there is every indication this dump is the real deal,” Mr. Krebs wrote.

Even if the information was taken from Ashley Madison, it’s likely some of it was falsified. The site doesn’t verify the information it gathers. A reporter at The Intercept — an unmarried woman in New York City — said a man in South Africa had used her email address to create an account.

Who released the information, and why?

A group of hackers calling themselves Impact Team posted a small portion of the data in July, and they threatened to release the rest unless the site was shut down.

The hackers said they were upset about Ashley Madison’s policy for deleting user data when requested. The company has long offered members the ability to scrub their profiles and information from the site for $19, a feature that BuzzFeed News said generated nearly $2 million in 2014. But, as the breach showed, the data remained.

“We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of A.L.M. and their members,” Impact Team wrote, referring to Avid Life Media. “Now everyone gets to see their data.”

How could I check who had an account?

A reminder: The information found in the data has not been verified.

But two different search tools have surfaced that claim to show whether an email address was used.

More than 15,000 email addresses in the breach were hosted on United States government and military servers, The Hill reported.

How has Avid Life Media responded?

The company is cooperating with law enforcement agencies in Canada and the United States to find the hackers. With a business that relies on the trust of its members now in turmoil, Ashley Madison has sharply denounced the hackers’ talk of principles.

“This event is not an act of hacktivism, it is an act of criminality,” it said in a statement. “It is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities. The criminal, or criminals, involved in this act have appointed themselves as the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society.”

After the initial breach, the company said it had adjusted its policy for deleting user data and was taking steps to delete the stolen data.