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Analysis Reveals Almost No Real Women On Ashley Madison
gurps_npc writes: Ashley Madison claimed to have about 31 million men and 5.5 million woman enrolled. Those odds are not good for the men, 6:1. But unfortunately, most of those 'women' were fake. This researcher analyzed the data and found only 12,000 actual, real women using Ashley Madison. That means for every 7750 men, there were 3 women. There are reports that Ashley Madison paid people to create fake female profiles. Their website admits that 'some of the users may be there for "entertainment purposes."' The article itself is well written, including a description of the analysis. A charitable person would say that Ashley Madison was selling a fantasy, not reality. But a realist would say Ashley Madison is just a thief stealing money from lonely, unhappy men.
I guess that those users were more likely to be professional chatters. Within 10 minutes of signing up to the site, I received one message from another user, but Ashley Madison demanded money from me to read it. I suppose it is how the scam, if there is one, works. I could investigate more, but I forgot my password. I could recover it but... *yawn*
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
Simply put: you could get your subscription fee back in some circumstances, but you never got refunds on the money you had to spend to message people, to buy virtual gifts, chat sessions etc.
I think this is what keeps most people from applying for a refund:
https://www.ashleymadison.com/...
if it is determined that you have complied with the above requirements, we will mail you a REFUND CHECK for the original purchase (plus any applicable taxes) within 6-8 weeks of receiving your application. Please note that your refund check will state that it is from "Ashley Madison."
Who wants a check from Ashely Madison sent to their home or work?
Even without that, it's a good scam. You ask people for money to guarantee something that will happen to some of them anyway. Imagine that the odds are 5%. You get 100 people to pay you the $250. 5 of them are lucky, so you keep $1,250. You refund the other $23,750 (after earning interest on it for a year, say $475 at a conservative 2% interest rate). Now you've made $1,725, for doing precisely nothing.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I suspect the truth is that whoever did the numbers in the OP article fudged them juuuust a bit.
For example, I see no references made to controlling for fake MALE profiles. Apparently only the female ones can be fake?
The analyses shown provided the data for both male and female profiles, which you would know if you had just read the article. The article also explicitly acknowledged that we don't know if the leaked data were manipulated or scrubbed in some way--of course, it's not like we're ever going to be given access to known-genuine data.
That said, there wasn't an obvious incentive for AM to fake male profiles. Unlike males, females were not charged to use the service. (Presumably because it *is* difficult to recruit women to these sites. It's not like we don't see offline parallels--there's a reason why bars have Ladies' Nights.) AM only made money when men contacted women. AM doesn't make money if real women send messages to fake men. Heck, it would cost them money, since those real women wouldn't be interacting with AM's paying male customers.
~Idarubicin
' Their website admits that 'some of the users may be there for "entertainment purposes."'
TRANSLATION: "Approximately 99.995%, of our female users may not actually exist except at profiles on our site."
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
It's true, and to stay out of legal trouble, most now put it in their terms and conditions.
Citation or you are spewing garbage.
If he won't, I will (simple Google search, which you could do, if you knew how to work Google):
https://erosdating.com/terms-o...
"You also understand and agree that there are users and members on the Site that use and subscribe to our Service for purely entertainment purposes. Those users and subscribers are not seeking physical meetings with anyone they meet on the Service, but consider their communications with users and members to be for their amusement."
In other words, they find it amusing to troll people, and some of the people who troll people may or may not be employed by the company.