Ashley Madison has today released a statement defending the company against “greatly exaggerated” media reports written after the website was hacked last month.
The adultery site’s parent company, Avid Life Media (ALM) has stood its ground against some journalists, who it believes have made ill assumptions based on information found in the stolen files.
The statement also included information about the site’s user acquisition rates since the initial data breach in July, saying that despite the data hack, the company is still growing strongly.
A particular issue discussed in the statement is that of female users, after a recent article reported that many of the site’s female users appeared to be fakes, bots or inactive accounts.
The report, written by Analee Newitz claimed that around “12,000 of the profiles out of millions belonged to actual, real women who were active users of Ashley Madison”.
Defending the site against the initial report, the statement says: “This past week alone, hundreds of thousands of new users signed up for the Ashley Madison platform — including 87,596 women.
“Furthermore, in the first half of this year the ratio of male members who paid to communicate with women on our service versus the number of female members who actively used their account (female members are not required to pay to communicate with men on Ashley Madison) was 1.2 to 1.
“These numbers are the main reason that Ashley Madison is the number one service for people seeking discreet relationships. Last week alone, women sent more than 2.8 million messages within our platform.”
Newitz has since released an updated version of the analysis, saying that the low number was calculated as part of a “misunderstanding of the evidence”.
Last week, ALM announced the exit of Ashley Madison founder and CEO, Noel Biderman after the personal information of its 33m users were released onto the dark web.
The leaked information included the names, email addresses and credit card details of Ashley Madison users, as well as emails exchanged between the site’s executives.
The site recently announced that it is offering a $500,000 (£240,000) reward to anyone who can provide information leading to the identification and arrest of the hackers, who identify themselves as The Impact Team.
Read the full Ashley Madison statement below:
Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated. The company continues its day-to-day operations even as it deals with the theft of its private data by criminal hackers. Despite having our business and customers attacked, we are growing. This past week alone, hundreds of thousands of new users signed up for the Ashley Madison platform — including 87,596 women.
Some journalists have turned the focus of the criminal act against Ashley Madison inside out, attacking us instead of the hackers. Last week, a reporter who claimed to analyze the stolen data made incorrect assumptions about the meaning of fields contained in the leaked data. This reporter concluded that the number of active female members on Ashley Madison could be calculated based on those assumptions. That conclusion was wrong.
Last week alone, women sent more than 2.8 million messages within our platform. Furthermore, in the first half of this year the ratio of male members who paid to communicate with women on our service versus the number of female members who actively used their account (female members are not required to pay to communicate with men on Ashley Madison) was 1.2 to 1. These numbers are the main reason that Ashley Madison is the number one service for people seeking discreet relationships.
We have customers in nearly every zip code in the United States, as well as users in more than 50 countries around the world. The Ashley Madison app is the 14th highest grossing app in the USA social networking category in the Apple App Store. Approximately 70 percent of our revenue on any given day is from members making repeat purchases. We think that shows happy customers on a consistent basis.
Ashley Madison is the number one service for real people seeking discreet encounters. We invite everyone to visit our website or our app and make up their own mind.