Ashley Madison Update: Did Cheating Website Really Gain More Members after Hack?
Cheating website Ashley Madison claimed that it was able to gain 4 million new subscribers after it became the victim of a massive hack in August 2015, but there are those who think the site is just bluffing.
It can be remembered that Ashley Madison lost the personal details of its 37 million users during a data breach last year, but the cheating website said it still managed to gain 4 million new subscribers after that. Taking into consideration the number of fembots in its social network and the fine print saying the authenticity of the profiles is not guaranteed, the site's claims may sound dubious, according to The Next Web.
The terms of Ashley Madison explicitly mentions that the authenticity of any of the profiles cannot be guaranteed. In addition, earlier reports suggested that 80 percent of the new subscribers' purchases were made using bots, the report details.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
During the massive data dump in August last year, an email exchange took place between Ashley Madison CEO Noel Biderman and other executives of the company. The emails contained information suggesting that only five to seven percent of all the accounts are made up of women. It was also revealed that Biderman was pressuring his managers to come up with a system that can produce fake accounts, the report explains.
After the leak, there were rumors that Ashley Madison was about to shut down. However, a company spokesperson denied the rumors and highlighted the site's supposed growth amid the scandal, Movie News Guide reports.
In addition, Lauren McKeon of Toronto Life discovered that the couple that Ashley Madison's PR team gave her was bogus.
In April last year, Ashley Madison's holding firm Avid Life was gunning for a $1 billion IPO. However, Reuters said some of the hacked documents indicate that the investors want the firm to increase their liquidity so they could sell their shares.
From 2010 to 2013, the cheating website's revenue growth was steadily decreasing, but the company suddenly reported a 50 percent increase in 2014. It is worth noting that the firm did not provide any explanation for the sudden surge in revenue. The trail of evidence seems to say that the company is simply lying about a lot of things, the report suggests.
Despite all the controversy surrounding the cheating website and the lawsuits filed against it, Ashley Madison still continues its operations.
