TWO WORKERS at a Salisbury science base are among the 1,667 people from the city identified as having registered for the infidelity website Ashley Madison.

Details of the Porton Down employees are included in the 1.2million British people on the database that has been released by hackers according to the Daily Telegraph.

The newspaper states there are 124 civil servants, 92 Ministry of Defence staff, around 50 police officers, 56 NHS workers, 65 local education and school staff and 1,716 people at universities and further education colleges.

Web experts have warned that appearing on the list of users does not confirm a link to the site, as Ashley Madison only validated email addresses for paying subscribers, meaning that made-up, out-of-use and invalid addresses could have been used to register for the site.

SNP MP Michelle Thomson has already denied any connection with the site after an email addressed allegedly linked to her appeared among the data posted. The MP for Edinburgh West said the "out-of-use" email address had been "harvested by hackers".

The group behind the attack - The Impact Team - breached Ashley Madison's servers last month, and now claim to have released this.

In some cases, user names and even post codes of users are also listed.

Lamar Bailey, the director of security research and development at cyber-security firm Tripwire said the implications of the breach could be very personal for some if proven accurate.

"The data stolen and released has far reaching social implications and people are already harvesting and creating metrics on the data. Sites are publishing which cities have the most 'cheaters' using which cities have the most profiles listed on the site.

"This could play into hiring decisions too because many companies run background checks, Facebook, Twitter, and Google searches for applicants. If an applicant shows up as an Ashley Madison user does that show something about the applicant's trustworthiness and morals?"

Ashley Madison's parent company Avid Life Media (ALM) has branded the hackers criminals.

In a statement ALM said: "We will not sit idly by and allow these thieves to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world. We are continuing to fully co-operate with law enforcement to seek to hold the guilty parties accountable to the strictest measures of the law."

ALM appealed for anyone with information on the hack to come forward.