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Security The Internet

Ashley Madison Says It Added 4 Million Members Since the Hack (cnn.com) 125

Posted by samzenpus from the no-shame dept.
New submitter fardindany writes with news that the months-old Ashley Madison hack seems to have had little impact on new users joining up. CNN reports: "Despite the infamous hack that exposed millions of cheaters online, infidelity dating site Ashley Madison says its ranks are growing. At the time of the hack, Ashley Madison said it had 39 million members. The website now says it has more than 43 million members, according to a rolling count on its homepage."
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Ashley Madison Says It Added 4 Million Members Since the Hack More

Ashley Madison Says It Added 4 Million Members Since the Hack

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  • Actually 4 new members.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28, 2015 @03:38PM (#51197471)

    And 3,999,996 bots.

  • Obvious reason (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ranton ( 36917 ) on Monday December 28, 2015 @03:38PM (#51197475)

    Without some really strong evidence, why would anyone believe these 4 million new members aren't 99% AI-controlled bots? Or at least 99% of the new female users.

    • Re:Obvious reason (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28, 2015 @03:54PM (#51197605)

      Or just the masses re-joining this time under assumed/fake names?

      • Or just the masses re-joining this time under assumed/fake names?

        Or even if they are legitimate new users how many of the 39 million previous users left?

      • Why would the masses rejoin after the revelations of the percentage of women being so low and the participation rate of women being even lower?

        • Because probably they're losers whose chance to get lucky on MA while really low is still much higher than in the real world.

    • People are stupid.

      Go figure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by unrtst ( 777550 )

      Or at least 99% of the new female users.

      I am a tad bit curious what the real numbers may reveal.
      Hypothetically, if I was looking for a site to find someone of the opposite sex, and then I learned about some site that had such a large imbalance in my favor, that might sway me to join. I don't honestly believe that to be the case, but it makes me wish I could trust the stats just to fulfill my curiosity :-)

      • Perhaps, but the 'learned that the same site's database got completely raped, and its member lists got published in the open' might put a bit of a crimp into things...

        I mean seriously, there's a lot of idiots on this planet, but 4 million of them in a couple of months? I'm not seeing it, even as misanthropic as I am.

    • Re:Obvious reason (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lunix Nutcase ( 1092239 ) on Monday December 28, 2015 @04:05PM (#51197683)

      Why would you bother to think they are AI-controlled bots? Someone probably just wrote a script to make 4 million accounts with pre-populated data.

    • Without some really strong evidence, why would anyone believe these 4 million new members aren't 99% AI-controlled bots? Or at least 99% of the new female users.

      Well, a number of things.

      (1) The argument that 99+% of female users were bots never quite made a lot of sense. It's true that men cheat more than women, but by a factor of something like 2:1, not several orders of magnitude higher. Even internet porn use is nowhere near the claimed level of asymmetry by gender on AM.

      (2) The actual person who made the claim about the massive percentage of female bots actually admitted her data analysis was completely bogus [gizmodo.com] and that she had no idea what she was doing in int

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rsborg ( 111459 )

        You keep making claims the bot story was faulty analysis. Do you have a single link to backup your claim?

      • After this data breech I made an account at Ashley Madison as I wanted to see what is "so special" about them.

        I did not upload a photo or something. But filled out most stuff with reasonable (more or less correct) data.

        As you have to pay for basically everything there, you can not even see more than one profile photo IIRC without payed account, I basically lost interest after an hour and never came back.

        After 4 or 6 weeks I had like 50 "winks" or "messages" ... most messages looked reasonable enough.

        Anyway:

    • Without some really strong evidence, why would anyone believe these 4 million new members aren't 99% AI-controlled bots?

      You say, "AI-controlled bots" as if that's a bad thing.

  • I believe them (Score:5, Funny)

    by rasmusbr ( 2186518 ) on Monday December 28, 2015 @03:39PM (#51197481)

    After all, what do bots care about reputation?

  • This is why CNN can't be trusted with the news (Score:5, Funny)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Monday December 28, 2015 @03:43PM (#51197523)

    >> according to a rolling count on its homepage

    Has anyone NOT on SlashDot NOT written a visitor/user/customer counter that started at a fictitious number and automatically incremented as time went on? (This is, after all, the culture of "fake it until you make it.")

  • Since almost all of the accounts from women in AM were mad up "for amusement" as per the T&C and run by staff members you can only presume that the 4,000,000 figure is almost all Bots and a few sad and desperate guys.

  • Doubt there are any women to meet them though, just Ashley Madison employees (who may or may not be female or human) to lead them on.

  • The worst humanity has to offer (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have to ask the question: In a world where something like this exists, why even bother with the pretense of 'marriage' at all anymore? In the U.S. the divorce rate is at least 50%, and it's as bad in many places all over the world; it's not far-fetched to assume that even in places where the rate is low, it just means people are cheating on their spouses and not bothering with divorce. Even ignoring that, what's the purpose of marriage in modern times, anyway? Bastardy used to carry a huge social stigma,

    • Re:The worst humanity has to offer (Score:5, Informative)

      by sjames ( 1099 ) on Monday December 28, 2015 @04:23PM (#51197807) Homepage Journal

      It's worth noting that while 50% of all marriages end in divorce, most people who get married stay married. The stat gets skewed by the fact that many who get divorced will marry and get divorced again.

      • It's worth noting that while 50% of all marriages end in divorce, most people who get married stay married. The stat gets skewed by the fact that many who get divorced will marry and get divorced again.

        In Australia when you count first, second and third marriages, the amount of people who actually end up staying married to somebody is about 70%.

        I guess that either they've finally found their true loves, or they're just too exhausted and can't afford the legal fees anymore.

      • On second marriages: "The triumph of hope over experience."

        Samuel Johnson

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      I think that pretty much most people who get married start out with an idea of being committed to the institution, but their experience sours after.

  • Did it say if these new members were also from the IP address 127.0.0.1?

  • The hack brought a lot of publicity for the site, i wasn't previously aware that it existed and i'm sure many others weren't too.
    Would be interesting to know how many people have signed up using fake details, or have signed up solely out of curiosity having read about the hack...

    • I think that this is probably correct.

      People are so used to data breaches these days that I am sure people figure "Well, they probably learned their lesson and won't make that mistake again..."

      I mean, I still shop at Target despite being caught up in their cluster of a data breach...

  • Crossover in 2045! (Score:5, Funny)

    by swm ( 171547 ) <swmcd@world.std.com> on Monday December 28, 2015 @04:20PM (#51197791) Homepage

    The US population counter gives the US population as 323M + 1 person every 13 seconds.
    Ashley Madison claims 39M users + 4M users in 4 months.
    Doing the math gives crossover in 2045, at which time everyone in the country will be on Ashley Madison.

    • The US population counter gives the US population as 323M + 1 person every 13 seconds. Ashley Madison claims 39M users + 4M users in 4 months. Doing the math gives crossover in 2045, at which time everyone in the country will be on Ashley Madison.

      I am doing the math on behalf of those who are too dumb or too lazy, whichever is lamer
      August 19th - December 28th = 131 days
      131 days * 86,400 (seconds in a day) = 11,318,400 seconds have passed
      11m seconds / 4m new signups = 1 user added every 2.75 seconds


      So we will be adding 11.5 m users per year
      If 48% of the US population is male that's 150m men
      minus the 20m who haven't reached 10 years of age
      dividing by 50% for those who are married
      that gives us 70m or so who would statistically be married six y

    • 1. The user number is not US only.
      2. The population counter factors in deaths, dead AM users and still AM users.

  • more morons in the world than previous believed to be.

  • A fool and his privacy are soon parted.

  • That's because this country is filled with shit.

  • ..most AM accounts were "hey what's this?" non-paying, non verified accounts, I believe them. They added 4million accounts of people signing up/in to see what the big deal was after all the hype.

    Now, how many paying accounts are there of those? IIRC previously it was like 1%.

  • Well, if 39 million people were outed on when Ashley Madison got hacked, it stands to reason that there are about 39 million others that are now interested in using Ashley Madison and don't really care if their spouses know they are on it. PROFIT!!

    • Even better for AM would be of those users would get their spouse to sign up as well, and in the process get a somewhat more balanced gender ratio - after all it seems they are mostly after heterosexual encounters - and have even more chance to grow. They just may have to change their language and transform from being a cheaters site to a swingers site.

  • why ? (Score:2)

    by Tom ( 822 )

    I wonder why. Not because of the data breach, but because of the various analyses done that gave strong evidence that your chances of talking to an actual female on the site is pretty close to zero. After that got out, why would any man register an account there, even for free?

    Maybe these are all women who are glad that the ratio is such, because it gives them better chances? ;-)

  • Bots aside, the so-called new members are probably current members signing up for new accounts with different email addresses and pseudonyms instead of real names to protect their identity in the event of another breach.

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