Oh, The Irony - Ashley Madison Users Cheated And Lied To, Virtually No Women On The Site

Some interesting news has surfaced from the Ashley Madison hack: the data that people have been analyzing since the leak surfaced seems to suggest that there were virtually no actual women using the site. LOL. How’s that for irony? The men lining up to pay thousands of dollars for the promise of a sordid affair were paying for nothing. How does this work?

Of the 5.5 million “female” accounts on the site, only 12,108 belonged to actual, real women who were active users of Ashley Madison. But “active users” even in this case is a term to be used very loosely. That was the number of women who paid to delete accounts. So that number points to non-activity as opposed to activity. Only 1,492 female accounts ever checked their mailbox. There was also a chat system that roughly 11 million men had engaged in. Guess how many women engaged? 24oo.

As a writer for Gizmodo says, “When you look at the evidence, it’s hard to deny that the overwhelming majority of men using Ashley Madison weren’t having affairs. They were paying for a fantasy.” Indeed. There were roughly 37 million people in the database and only 12,000 can be labeled as female accounts not created by the company. That’s right, thousands of accounts seem to originate from an IP address that point right back to the Ashley Madison server.

These are all allegations made from an intense analysis of the data done by Gizmodo writer Annalee Newitz. In one particularly damning graph, Newitz writes:

“Ashley Madison employees did a pretty decent job making their millions of women’s accounts look alive. They left the data in these inactive accounts visible to men, showing nicknames, pictures, sexy comments. But when it came to data that was only visible on to company admins, they got sloppy. The women’s personal email addresses and IP addresses showed marked signs of fakery. And as for the women’s user activity, the fundamental sign of life online? Ashley Madison employees didn’t even bother faking that at all…

Either way, we’re left with data that suggests Ashley Madison is a site where tens of millions of men write mail, chat, and spend money for women who aren’t there.”

So, the cheaters were being cheated – how’s that for irony. Or karma. Or a particularly expensive cosmic joke. Whatever you want to call it, the business seems to be an elaborate sham. I don’t think anyone’s going to be feeling too sorry for these 57 million men who’ve been robbed, though.