Cheating spouse website Ashley Madison on the rebound
It has invested significantly in security and privacy since last year, resulting in an average of 10,715 new members daily.
TORONTO: Ashley Madison, the cheating spouse website with a global membership, is set for a rebound as efforts are made to restore members privacy and trust after a disastrous data breach three years ago.
Although the website that caters to people seeking sex outside marriage was dealt a blow in 2015 when e-mail addresses and account details of 32 million members were hacked, its membership has not declined and is poised for an exponential growth.
Its president and chief technology officer, Ruben Buell, told Bernama in an interview that Ashley Madison had invested significantly in security and privacy since last year which saw an average of 10,715 new members daily.
“With the increased focus on member experience, we’ve been able to drive substantial growth for the firm,” said Buell who joined Toronto-based Ashley Madison in April 2017.
The website with the tagline “Life is Short, have an affair”, recorded more than double its daily new member count to 20,518 new members per day.
“Despite the events of 2015, business is still strong, with over 56 million members globally who have joined since 2002, and that’s because our members believe in us and are getting something of value.”
Buell said Ashley Madison is catering to a niche group of married individuals who seek an affair, companionship, or someone to talk to.
‘’We offer them this service discreetly because something is lacking in their marriage, and recorded more than 1.4 million connections monthly.
‘’Ashley Madison is living up to our promise of discreetly connecting like-minded individuals, many of whom aren’t actually looking to leave their spouses, but rather find something that they are currently missing so they can return a happier partner, parent, etc.”
Buell said this is especially true for women who are seen more on the website than men, with a global ratio for 2017 of 1.3 active female accounts for every one paid male account.
Ashley Madison has 55 million members
“We provide them with the fulfilment they have been longing for but have been unable to retrieve in their primary relationship,” he quipped.
Dr Alicia Walker in her book, The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife, said “many of our female members are happy with their marriages, love their spouses, and want to keep their families together, but they are struggling with this one part of marriage, that is monogamy”.
She explained that these women are essentially in sexless or orgasmless marriage and despite efforts to repair this with their primary partners, it does not change for them.
“What if we can help them fill that void? Affairs only have a negative impact if they are found out, but that’s exactly what Ashley Madison aims to avoid.
“’We are in the business of successful affairs, which are ones that are undiscovered.”
Buell said Ashley Madison has cleaned up its act with a rebranded parent company and is confident of further success, perhaps with infidelity being the most durable business in the history of commerce.
“We are on a rebound and will continue to grow,” Buell beamed, saying he had spoken to clients who continued to seek the website for services and hook-ups.
Meanwhile, Toronto psychologist Dr Oren Amitay has been quoted as saying that people were having affairs long before Ashley Madison came into being.
‘’Ashley Madison is merely enabling it by removing the fear of the other person complicating their life or at least think it’s removing the fear.
Statistics Canada reported that in 2008, the last time it collected data on divorce, more than 40% of marriages could be expected to end in divorce before the 30th anniversary.
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