Ashley Madison
Ashley Madison is an online dating service founded in 2002, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. It specifically caters to individuals seeking extramarital affairs, differentiating itself from traditional dating sites by focusing on casual sexual encounters rather than long-term relationships. The platform's slogan, "Life is short. Have an affair," encapsulates its premise that those in committed relationships can explore their sexual desires without the expectation of emotional attachment. Since its inception, Ashley Madison has reportedly attracted around 75 million members across 52 countries, although its user base has faced scrutiny and skepticism regarding the authenticity of its female profiles.
The agency has been involved in significant controversies, notably a major data breach in 2015 that exposed the personal information of millions of users, leading to severe repercussions for many individuals. Following the incident, the company rebranded and implemented new security measures to restore trust and attract more female users. Despite past challenges, Ashley Madison continues to operate, aiming to provide a discreet platform for those seeking to engage in affairs while navigating the complexities and risks associated with infidelity. In 2024, a Netflix documentary titled "Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal" delves into the implications of the hacking incident, further exploring the impact on users' lives and the company's response.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Ashley Madison
Company information
- Date founded: 2002
- Industry: Online dating
- Corporate headquarters: Toronto, Canada
- Type: Private
The Ashley Madison Agency is an online dating service that specializes in facilitating sexual liaisons between people in committed relationships, particularly marriage. Unlike more traditional dating websites, such as Match.com or eHarmony, Ashley Madison does not purport to offer the possibility of long-term relationships—the expectation is not to find true love or even romance. Instead, the premise of the Ashley Madison Agency can be summed up in its slogan: "Life is short. Have an affair." Although reliable numbers are difficult to ascertain given the anonymous nature of the agency’s clientele, in 2022, the company announced it reached 75 million members since 2002 across fifty-two countries with fifteen languages. Despite years of negative presentations in the media, third-party estimates of Ashley Madison's membership as the 2020s progressed reached 80 million members.
Ashley Madison’s service caters specifically to those individuals hoping to engage in an affair without the possible repercussions typically involved. When people in a committed relationship cheat, they are prone to poor judgment and ill-advised risks that can result in their infidelity being exposed, causing tremendous emotional damage to their spouses or partners and their families. In addition, affairs can lead to those involved in the liaison beginning to feel emotional attachments to their partner, creating enormous emotional debt and even the possibility of blackmail. By establishing a purportedly discreet network for online communication that assists in any assignations, stressing the outcome of the service as purely sexual, and promoting its records as secure, the agency theoretically minimizes those risks. It creates an essentially consequence-free environment where cheaters are allowed to cheat with few real-time risks.
History
The Ashley Madison Agency began with a perceived niche in a market, a need not being met. In 2000, Darren Morgenstern, a failed website entrepreneur and high school dropout in Toronto, Canada, decided the plethora of online dating services failed to address one specific market—disenchanted married people whose long-term commitments were no longer sexually satisfying. He claimed that monogamy easily staled into monotony, and therefore, married people almost inevitably allowed their sexual energy to cool; work and family responsibilities often take precedence. These were good people who needed an outlet for their sexual needs. Commitment, Morgenstern reasoned, was not necessarily equivalent to loyalty; a married person could have an affair while remaining committed to their original relationship. Additionally, Morgenstern asserted that sexual needs were not the same as relationship needs—a married person could have an affair while still maintaining their duties and responsibilities to the committed relationship. He proposed creating a website wherein married people looking for the excitement and satisfaction of a purely sexual relationship could discretely set up encounters with other similarly committed (and frustrated) persons without judgment or consequence.
In 2002, Morgenstern launched The Ashley Madison Agency—the name, he claimed later, came from two popular women’s names at the time. The buzz from his print and infomercial marketing campaign created an immediate success. Although the agency offers a variety of membership levels (each with its own price), the basic idea is relatively simple: subscribers are allowed to select from the site’s membership base and send up to a certain number of inquiries per month. The decision to respond is left entirely up to the selected members. In turn, the agency provides a certain number of minutes for the members to chat, exchange information, and generally ascertain whether they both want to pursue a meeting. Should a subscriber decide the site is not for them, for a fee, their entire file—all their credit card information as well as their confidential data on sexual practices and fantasies—would be permanently deleted. Only later, as Ashley Madison became embroiled in a hacking incident, would these claims of permanent profile deletion be exposed as false. Additionally, Ashley Madison was accused of creating fake profiles and purchasing “bots” to increase profits.
By 2007, the service was generating enough revenue for Morgenstern to sell, and he accepted an offer from the company Avid Life Media, run by Noel Biderman. The membership for the service was, at that point, overwhelmingly men over the age of thirty-five—some estimates suggest as high as 70 percent. Over the years, suspicions had also grown that the agency actually invented most of its female subscribers as bait for men. The agency never explicitly denied the charge, pointing out that the fine print on the website does explain that some profiles are only for entertainment purposes. In 2022, the global ratio of male-to-female profiles on the site was reported to be 1:0.6. While updated statistics on these ratios are difficult to obtain, it is believed the number of male users greatly outnumbers the female users of the site.
Impact
The website has also generated much controversy, accused by moral advocacy groups of promoting adultery (in response, Morgenstern claimed blaming the site for adultery was like blaming gun manufacturers for murders or fast-food chains for obesity). The agency boldly advertised itself on billboards, on radio and television, and most concertedly on the internet. Even when the agency was forced to pull ads from spaces such as ESPN or New York’s Time Square, the publicity generated by these stories drew more traffic to the site. Public relations representatives for Ashley Madison even worked the talk show circuits, arguing that affairs could actually be therapeutic for otherwise stale relationships, as well as a helpful way for those not feeling appreciated in a relationship to rebuild their damaged self-esteem. Biderman and his wife appeared on The View, a daytime talk show with a predominantly female audience, to argue for the site's positive attributes.
Ashley Madison’s guarantee of anonymity and discretion, however, was significantly shaken when, in July 2015, an anonymous "hacktivist" group identified only as the Impact Team breached the agency’s supposedly protected data bank and threatened to post all the confidential information, exposing all the members, unless Avid Life Media agreed to shut down the site’s operations. Just weeks later, when the parent company refused to cooperate, millions of names, email addresses, and passwords were released in a file-sharing data dump, including those of members who were given the membership as a gift or prank. Several minor celebrities and low-level politicians were allegedly exposed. Additional users reportedly experienced devastating effects—relationships were ended, families were broken up, reputations were compromised, employment was terminated, and, in extreme cases, outed subscribers even attempted suicide.
Although Biderman stepped down in the wake of the public relations disaster, the website maintained its presence. It announced within weeks additional cybersecurity features to make similar hacking attempts far more difficult, stopping short, however, of its previous promise of absolute discretion. According to the agency, the site continued to attract new members. By the summer of 2016, Avid Life Media, which had faced several class action lawsuits due to the breach, had rebranded itself as Ruby Corp. and replaced Ashley Madison’s well-known tagline with "Find your moment." The original slogan, “Life is short. Have an affair.” was brought back only a year later.
In December 2016, following a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation of the 2015 hack, Ashley Madison agreed to pay a total of $1.6 million to settle charges of failing to protect users' data and deceiving consumers, the latter charge arising from the company's practice of using computer programs known as "bots" to impersonate female users to sell premium services to male subscribers. The settlement also required Ashley Madison to implement more stringent security measures. The company made similar arrangements with Canadian and Australian authorities to strengthen data security.
By early 2019, Ruben Buell, president and chief technology officer of parent company Ruby since 2017, was emphasizing that Ashley Madison had been recovering and returning to its brand roots (particularly the commitment to discretion), focusing on customer needs, working to bring more female users to the site, establishing increased security measures, and strengthening its mobile capabilities. In May 2024, online streaming service Netflix released a documentary about the hacking of Ashley Madison titled Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal, which interviewed employees of the company, as well as site users affected by the hacking incident. The three-part documentary looked into the company’s handling of the hacking incident, how the exposure affected the lives of individuals and their families, and the company's insistence on continuing operations.
Bibliography
Basu, Eric. "Cybersecurity Lessons Learned from the Ashley Madison Hack." Forbes, 26 Oct. 2015, www.forbes.com/sites/ericbasu/2015/10/26/cybersecurity-lessons-learned-from-the-ashley-madison-hack. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Bomey, Nathan. "Ashley Madison's New Slogan: 'Find Your Moment,' Not 'Have an Affair.'" USA Today, 12 July 2016, www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/07/12/ashley-madison-avid-media-ruby/86981490. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Callan, Paul. "Ashley Madison Hack: Costly End of the Affair." CNN, 25 Aug. 2015, www.cnn.com/2015/08/24/opinions/callan-ashley-madison-hack/index.html. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Dakss, Brian. "Double Trouble." CBS News, 14 Feb. 2005, www.cbsnews.com/news/double-trouble. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Fequiere, Roxanne. "Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal Documentary Stays Faithful to the Drama." Netflix, 23 May 2024, www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/ashley-madison-sex-lies-scandal-release-date-news-trailer. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Kolhatkar, Sheelah. "Cheating, Incorporated." Bloomberg Businessweek, 10 Feb. 2011, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-02-10/cheating-incorporated-ijyy3bm8. Accessed 28 Apr. 2023.
Lamont, Tom. "Life after the Ashley Madison Affair." The Guardian, 27 Feb. 2016, www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/28/what-happened-after-ashley-madison-was-hacked. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Newitz, Annalee. "What Everyone Gets Wrong about the 2015 Ashley Madison Scandal." New Scientist, 12 June 2024, www.newscientist.com/article/mg26234952-100-what-everyone-gets-wrong-about-the-2015-ashley-madison-scandal. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Pearson, Patricia. "The Two-Timers' Club." Toronto Life, 1 Jan. 2009, torontolife.com/city/two-timers-club. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Perlroth, Nicole. "Ashley Madison Chief Steps Down after Data Breach." The New York Times, 28 Aug. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/08/29/technology/ashley-madison-ceo-steps-down-after-data-hack.html. Accessed 28 Apr. 2023.
Peterson, Andrea. "Ashley Madison Owner Agrees to Pay $1.6 Million to Settle US Investigations." The Washington Post, 14 Dec. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/12/14/ashley-madison-owner-agrees-to-pay-1-6-million-to-settle-u-s-investigations. Accessed 28 Apr. 2023.
Steele, Anne. "Ashley Madison Parent Rebrands Itself as Ruby Corp." The Wall Street Journal, 12 July 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/ashley-madison-parent-rebrands-itself-as-ruby-corp-1468322180. Accessed 28 Apr. 2023.
Syed, Fatima, and Robert Cribb. "Another Date for Ashley Madison?" The Star, 29 Mar. 2018, www.thestar.com/business/2018/03/29/another-date-for-ashley-madison.html. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Williams, Sophie, and Kimberley Bond. "Ashley Madison: Sex Lies and Scandal - Where is Noel Biderman Now?" Cosmopolitan, 20 May 2024, www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a44427158/noel-biderman-ashley-madison. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.