A little hacking never hurt nobody. At least, that’s the mantra Ashley Madison is repeating, as the adultery website reports that it is “still growing” despite the fact that the user information of some 37 million site visitors was recently compromised. According to parent company Avid Life Media, last week saw “hundreds of thousands” of new members join the site, and in a statement released Monday, the company channeled Mark Twain by insisting that, “Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated.” Apparently, the desire to cheat for some people is so strong that even the threat of exposure isn’t enough to deter them.
Moreover, Avid Life Media says a good number of the new members of Ashley Madison are women, no doubt a response to recent reports that many of the female users were fake, bots, or entirely inactive. Said the company, “This past week alone, hundreds of thousands of new users signed up for the Ashley Madison platform — including 87,596 women.” And just for good measure, they pointed out that by their calculations, women alone sent some 2.8 million messages last week, a sure sign of their active presence on the site. While men still outnumber women, Avid Life Media claims that the discrepancy is not that high, with the ratio between the sexes a mere 1.2 to 1.
Despite this reportedly strong showing, Ashley Madison has certainly has its fair share of hiccups recently. In addition to the hack, Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman resigned last week, a move that the company claimed was a mutual decision. The company has also certainly been put on the defensive, as much of the negative media maelstrom surrounding the very embarrassing hack seemed to focus more on the grimy nature of the site itself, more than the illegal activity that was the data leak. The company noted Monday, “Some journalists have turned the focus of the criminal act against Ashley Madison inside out, attacking us instead of the hackers.”
Regardless, Ashley Madison seems to be sticking it to the haters, growing its user base in spite of the negative attention. You do you, Ashley Madison.
