Ashley Madison continues to see strong growth despite exposing the information of more than ten million cheaters in a data breach that was one of the biggest hacks of 2015.
For those unfamiliar with the matter, here's the deal: Ashley Madison is a dating website that facilitates extramarital hookups, promising to help people engage in discreet affairs. In other words, the site aimed to serve as a safe haven for cheaters, giving them a buffet of potential matches with similar interests - to cheat on their spouses.
Millions of cheaters were exposed when Ashley Madison was hacked, leading to countless divorce cases and a huge scandal that paved the way for a slew of lawsuits. Broken families, tarnished reputations, suicides out of guilt - these were all tied to the Ashley Madison hack that exposed the personal information of cheaters using the service.
Despite this infamous hack, however, it seems Ashley Madison has held its appeal, with its user base still growing. At the time of the hack, Ashley Madison had 39 million members, whose details became public. One might think that the website would come crashing down after such a fiasco, but Ashley Madison currently has more than 43,380,000 anonymous members, according to the count on its home page (see image above).
This means that Ashley Madison has gained more than four million subscribers since the hack, suggesting that the temptation to cheat trumps the fear of being caught red-handed.
It remains unclear just what fueled this apparent subscriber growth, or whether Ashley Madison found a way to convince users that a similar fiasco would not ensue again in the future. The last statement the company made was on Aug. 31, when Ashley Madison parent company Avid Life Media said that reports of the website's demise were "greatly exaggerated" and it continued to see growth despite the hack.
That statement also contradicted previous media reports that claimed that an overwhelming majority of Ashley Madison members were men. The company said at the time that women actually sent 2.8 million messages within the platform in just one week, and the ratio of men to women who used their Ashley Madison account was 1.2 to 1.
Avid Life Media has not issued another statement since, and Ashley Madison remains mum about its ongoing affairs following the monumental hack.
Despite the apparent user growth, however, Ashley Madison is still in hot water and it faces an uphill battle ahead, with roughly a dozen class-action lawsuits filed by customers who feel the site failed to protect their identities and left them exposed. Dealing with so many lawsuits will surely be quite expensive and Ashley Madison may not be able to keep its head above the water for much longer.
Many observers blame cheaters for getting themselves into this mess by going on Ashley Madison in the first place. However, the members whose information were exposed argue that the hack and subsequent data dump that publicized their information harmed them considerably, and the company should face consequences.
It's interesting to see Ashley Madison still growing after such a massive issue, but the whole matter seems far from over.
