March 29, 2018
New president says the cheating-spouse website has cleaned up its act after a notorious data breach exposed its both its clients and some questionable business practices. But experts say its continued success is owed in no small part to the durability of infidelity.

Ashley Madison, the Toronto-based website that caters to people seeking sex outside of their marriages, was dealt with what should have been a crippling blow for any company.
In 2015, it experienced one of the largest data breaches in history, which saw the personal information of 32 million clients released, leading to many reported cases of divorces, resignations, firings and suicides.
But with a rebranded parent company and a new chief technology officer, Ashley Madison is very much still in business — one that both the company and an independent audit report say is growing exponentially.
Could infidelity be the most durable business in the history of commerce?
In an interview with the Star, Ruben Buell, president and chief technology officer of Toronto-based Ruby Life (formerly Avid Life Media), Ashley Madison’s parent company, said the company now has 55 million members.
An external audit by Ernst and Young found there were more than 5.6 million new registrations to the website in 2017. In Canada, membership grew by 17,371 a month. The male-to-female ratio, according to the report, is now 1:1 globally — previously, many of the female users had been fake accounts.
Cheating-spouse website Ashley Madison has its affairs in order after notorious data breach
Psychologists say Ashley Madison is tapping into the enduring appeal of infidelity — while the company didn’t invent it, it has created a space for it in the form of, what New York-based sex therapist Sari Cooper called, “the modern version of the baths, the brothel, tavern, or dungeon.”
“People have been having affairs long before Ashley Madison has been around,” said Toronto psychologist Dr. Oren Amitay. The website is merely enabling it by “removing the fear of the other person complicating their life — or at least think its removing the fear,” he added.
“Anything that convinces the population that this is normal contributes to more people doing that behaviour,” said Amitay. “People may use the website as a way to rationalize their decision by believing, for instance, that “infidelity is so common they even have a website for it. If its so common than it might not be such a bad thing.”
Amitay said Ashley Madison has honed in on a phenomenon that he’s often observed: affairs can happen when someone is reminded of their mortality after, for instance, a loved one has died or they have a serious health case.
“When death is thrown in your face, it makes you think. Some will change careers, others will take up skydiving, but affairs are the easiest way to change things,” said Amitay. He acknowledged that in some instances, when a person is in a “horrible, terrible, loveless, sexless marriage,” Ashley Madison can provide a useful platform for temporary escape.
More than 40 per cent of marriages are expected to end in divorce before the 30th anniversary, Statistics Canada reported in 2008, the last year the agency collected numbers on divorce. The limited research on infidelity suggests that, in North America, 15 per cent of women and 25 per cent of men will have extramarital affairs.
Claire Smith (who requested for her real name to not be used) has been on the site since 2002. The 45-year-old Toronto woman says the platform helped her deal with a sexless marriage with her first husband. “He was perfectly happy and I wasn’t,” she said. “My marriage was over regardless of the affair.”
Smith met her current husband on the website in 2008, and both are still Ashley Madison users. “You know, I think we almost set ourselves up for failure to think this has to be a monogamous relationship,” she said.“I don’t think (Ashley Madison is) any different from a gambling website, or Uber or anything, right? It just facilitates whatever the need is.”
Alicia M. Walker, the author of The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife: power, Pragmatism and Pleasure in Women’s Infidelity, surveyed many women who use Ashley Madison and found many of them felt the same way.
“The biggest shock for me was that women talked about infidelity being an exercise in power and sexual autonomy,” said the assistant professor of sociology at Missouri State University. These women were very pragmatic in the way they talked about it, said Walker, and spoke about fulfilment but also guilt. “They recognized this is not how its meant to be … but the depth of someone’s need must be really great to withstand all of this and do it.”
In his first year on the job, Buell said he has spoken to clients through weekly surveys that also indicate the need Walker refers to is, in fact, great. “Married dating,” as the company calls it, targets those who “feel lonely or they feel like something is missing from their life,” he said.
Cheating-spouse website Ashley Madison has its affairs in order after notorious data breach
Ashley Madison hired Ernst and Young to rebuild trust with those customers, said Buell, and to show how the company has reinvented itself from the ground up “one day at a time,” focusing primarily on security and discretion.
Since 2015, the 120-employee company has undergone multimillion-dollar class-action lawsuits, an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and a complete management makeover and a shift in public relations.
“If Ashley Madison gets hacked, it will change your life, so we put our standards way above even what financial situations would need,” said Buell.
Richard Powers, associate professor at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, told the Star the company’s comeback is an exception, and can be attributed to the very specific sector of dating that Noel Biderman, the company’s founder, created for itself.
“(Companies) that do come through (after a major scandal) usually come back under a different brand,” said Powers. “What is surprising is that they stayed with the same brand. But it’s familiar in the marketplace and they obviously felt the cache hadn’t been damaged to the point that people thought.
“It’s quite amazing.”
Powers, who teaches the case of Ashley Madison in his executive MBA class, added that Ashley Madison doesn't not have a monopoly over the infidelity market “but they’re the most recognized because there’s always an advantage to the first move — they were the first ones.”
The data breach increased the company’s notoriety, aided by the fact that Biderman was “a master marketer” — helping put the name “Ashley Madison” on the front pages without spending a dime, said Powers.
“There is a great brand here. There is a great business here,” said Buell. “What happened in 2015 happened. But we have survived and we are growing again and we will continue to grow.”
Related Stories
Latest News
Top news around the world
Academy Awards

‘Oppenheimer’ Reigns at Oscars With Seven Wins, Including Best Picture and Director

Get the latest news about the 2024 Oscars, including nominations, winners, predictions and red carpet fashion at 96th Academy Awards

Around the World

Celebrity News

> Latest News in Media

Watch It
Olivia Munn Reveals Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Double Mastectomy Procedure | E! News
March 13, 2024
kUaEV1Kd3S0
Travis Kelce Shares Details From His Trip to Singapore With Taylor Swift | E! News
March 13, 2024
3YXi-Dgf4eg
Kate Middleton VIRAL Photo: Agency Addresses Photoshop Claims | E! News
March 13, 2024
S4VkO0TpkCY
Da'Vine Joy Randolph Plays 'Smash or Pass' With Iconic Moments From Her Career
March 13, 2024
vkPdJEF2BX4
Jean Smart Wears a Hotel Bathrobe to Present an Award to Hannah Einbinder l Power of Comedy SxSW
March 12, 2024
Bw7uVEYQev4
Lenny Kravitz Walk of Fame Ceremony
March 12, 2024
MlWq8BcnwhE
Dak Prescott Extortion Plot & Steph Curry for President? | TMZ Sports Full Ep - 3/12/24
March 13, 2024
jHFsrjs7OFY
A Japanese space rocket blew up after takeoff Tuesday, turning the sky into a fireball of smoke.
March 13, 2024
YkfJ3Qg8B7c
#KimKardashian and #BiancaCensori hung out at #KanyeWest's listening party Tuesday night!
March 13, 2024
EfwLLq6bx9k
‘Pioneer Woman’ Ree Drummond denies using Ozempic to lose 60 pounds
March 13, 2024
Omfjk1AlZ3A
Chrissy Teigen reveals her ‘boob lift scars’ in daring dress at Jay-Z & Beyoncé’s Oscars 2024 party
March 13, 2024
VxZ2qXAlpmU
Zoë Kravitz pokes fun at dad Lenny Kravitz's style during Hollywood Walk of Fame speech
March 13, 2024
j3-lcFu_1sQ
TV Schedule
Late Night Show
Watch the latest shows of U.S. top comedians

Sports

Latest sport results, news, videos, interviews and comments
Latest Events
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Atletico Madrid - Barcelona
17
Mar
ENGLAND: FA Cup
Manchester United - Liverpool
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Inter Milan - Napoli
17
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
Borussia Dortmund - Eintracht Frankfurt
17
Mar
ENGLAND: FA Cup
Chelsea - Leicester City
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Roma - Sassuolo
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Verona - AC Milan
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Juventus - Genoa
17
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
SC Freiburg - Bayer Leverkusen
17
Mar
USA: Major League Soccer
Atlanta United - Orlando City
17
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
West Ham United - Aston Villa
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Rayo Vallecano - Real Betis
17
Mar
ENGLAND: Championship
Leeds - Millwall
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Las Palmas - Almeria
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Villarreal - Valencia
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Sevilla - Celta Vigo
16
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
Darmstadt - Bayern Munich
16
Mar
ENGLAND: FA Cup
Manchester City - Newcastle United
16
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Fulham - Tottenham Hotspur
16
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Osasuna - Real Madrid
13
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: 1/8 Final
Atletico Madrid - Inter Milan
12
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: 1/8 Final
Barcelona - Napoli
12
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: 1/8 Final
Arsenal - Porto
11
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Chelsea - Newcastle United
10
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Liverpool - Manchester City
10
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Real Madrid - Celta Vigo
10
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Aston Villa - Tottenham Hotspur
10
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Juventus - Atalanta
10
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Fiorentina - Roma
10
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
AC Milan - Empoli
09
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
Werder Bremen - Borussia Dortmund
09
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Arsenal - Brentford
09
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Bologna - Inter Milan
Find us on Instagram
at @feedimo to stay up to date with the latest.
Featured Video You Might Like
zWJ3MxW_HWA L1eLanNeZKg i1XRgbyUtOo -g9Qziqbif8 0vmRhiLHE2U JFCZUoa6MYE UfN5PCF5EUo 2PV55f3-UAg W3y9zuI_F64 -7qCxIccihU pQ9gcOoH9R8 g5MRDEXRk4k
Copyright © 2020 Feedimo. All Rights Reserved.