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

Posted by samzenpus on 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."

63 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Actually 4 new members.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And 3,999,996 bots.

    1. Re:Actually 4 new members.. by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

      Correction: Lucy Liu bots.

    2. Re:Actually 4 new members.. by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Funny

      That would be 66 (liu shi liu) bots. Only makes sense if you speak Mandarin... ;)

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    3. Re:Actually 4 new members.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      NEW LEAK FROM ASHLEY MADISON DOT COM!!!11!!!!!!q11!!!ELEVEN!!!

      for (int i = 1; i < 3999995; i++) {
      adduser(randname(), randage(18,39), rand() < .90 ? female : male);
      }

    4. Re:Actually 4 new members.. by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes, it's all there in the title:

      Ashley Madison Says _It_ Added 4 Million Members Since the Hack

  2. Obvious reason by ranton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
    1. Re:Obvious reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    2. Re:Obvious reason by rudy_wayne · · Score: 2

      People are stupid.

      Go figure.

    3. Re:Obvious reason by unrtst · · Score: 1

      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 :-)

    4. Re:Obvious reason by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    5. Re:Obvious reason by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      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 and that she had no idea what she was doing in interpreting the database fields.

      (3) A number of reputable news sources after the story came out actually went out and interviewed real women who had used the site. I'm not going to bother looking for it now, but I remember a BBC story who even interviewed two lesbians from neighboring towns or something that met on AM. If the 99+% bots claim was anywhere near true, it would be nearly statistically impossible for two REAL women to even find each other on AM.

      (4) Even if the database analysis in the original (widely reported) story was based on a correct interpretation (which -- see point (2) above -- it wasn't), the data was also obtained from hackers who were intent on destroying the business model of AM. It would be to hackers' benefit to make things look bad for AM, and making it look all male AM users were doing was talking to a bunch of bots would be a really ingenious strategy.

      (5) Even if the database analysis was correct (which seems unlikely), there are plenty of reports of users who joined after the hack to find out if their spouses were on AM. That number alone could explain a significant portion of the 4 million increase -- and those women are likely to be real women... even if they have no intention of being active on AM, they would still be new accounts.

      Ultimately, I don't really care. I'm sure there may be some bots involved (at least tens of thousands existed before the hack), but I find it exceedingly unlikely that 99+% of new accounts are fake, since the original claim was bogus anyway.

      BTW -- I find the whole idea of the site revolting, but I found the bot story weird enough to follow for a couple days -- until it utterly blew up and turned out to be based on a faulty analysis (as I thought was likely anyway). Of course, that never got reported widely, because "there probably are quite a few women on AM anyway" isn't nearly as interesting or sensationalistic as news as "99% of AM female 'users' are fembots and all these guys who are being embarrassed by the account leak were even greater morons than we thought!"

    6. Re:Obvious reason by maas15 · · Score: 1

      Oh, just history. I think everyone agrees that there's around a 0% chance that they actually added that many humans. Historically they've had all their fake accounts linked to bots of some kind.

    7. Re:Obvious reason by Penguinisto · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    8. Re:Obvious reason by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    9. Re:Obvious reason by WheezyJoe · · Score: 1

      or have a short memory, particularly where something involves getting laid or getting rich.

      --
      Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
    10. Re:Obvious reason by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      You think a script is AI?

    11. Re:Obvious reason by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

      Why would there need to be "AI" involved? A script to add entries into a DB is much less work.

    12. Re:Obvious reason by rsborg · · Score: 1

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

      --
      Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
    13. Re:Obvious reason by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      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: no girl I know ever would write on a new profile to a guy who has not even a single photo up and just scarcely has filled out the most important parts.

      Conclusion: either they where scammer, or bots or "editors" of the site. Funny: they even managed about 3 times to reuse the same photo, or a photo of the same person, on different "accounts".

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    14. Re:Obvious reason by quantaman · · Score: 2

      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?

      --
      I stole this Sig
    15. Re:Obvious reason by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      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?

    16. Re:Obvious reason by wvmarle · · Score: 1

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

  3. I believe them by rasmusbr · · Score: 4, Funny

    After all, what do bots care about reputation?

  4. This is why CNN can't be trusted with the news by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Funny

    >> 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.")

    1. Re:This is why CNN can't be trusted with the news by KatchooNJ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Also, what are the odds that the counter takes account cancellations into account? Accounts that have been removed since the hack likely aren't considered for that rolling counter.

      --
      "Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
    2. Re:This is why CNN can't be trusted with the news by maas15 · · Score: 1

      Years ago I made a version of uptime that multiplies the uptime by a very large number and then takes the modulus. It works great, except for when time goes backwards (oh well): http://weirdcrap.admiralsanand...

    3. Re:This is why CNN can't be trusted with the news by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      No, but I once had an "visitor counter" on my web site. The webmaster had included it. It worked by requesting an image with a counter rendered into it from a third party web site.

      After a year or so, the owner of that "counting site" sold it to a porn company. And they replaced the counter with something that caused a porn overlay on my web site.

      No idea how long that lasted, but a friend of mine eventually pointed me to it.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  5. So 3,999,990 fake women and 10 stupid guys then... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  6. The worst humanity has to offer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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, but I don't see that being so in modern times. Beyond that it's just a civil contract, with all that implies, and when the people involved decide to split, it complicates things. Really, in the modern world, what's the point? It's not like anyone seems to be taking it seriously as a 'committment'.

    1. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by sjames · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      It's a great way for a hot woman to wind up with a legal claim on half the assets and future income of a rich man.

      Because rich men have such a hard time finding pootenanny that they have to resort to a lame website?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by swb · · Score: 1

      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.

    4. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Imagine 12 men and 12 women. Eight couples get married and stay married. That's eight marriages that don't end in divorce. The other four men and four women all get married and divorced three times. That's 12 marriages that do end in divorce. Therefore the majority of marriages end in divorce (12 to 8), but the majority of people stay married (16 to 8).

    5. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      "Serial marriage" isn't being counted as "staying married". It's a very simple concept, let's try and say it slower for you...

      1. 50% of marriages end in divorce.
      2. >50% of people marry do not get divorced.

      This is possible because there are people who marry, get divorced, and then marry again, then get divorced again.

      Take the trivial example of a set of 7 people. Two of then call them A and B get married. Two others call them C and D also get married. Two others call them E and F also get married. Then C and D divorce and then C marries the final person call them G. Then C and G divorce. In this world of 7 people 4 people married and never divorced while 3 people married and divorced (at least once). So 57% of people "stayed married". However there were 4 marriages and 2 divorces so 50% of marriages end in divorce.

      Whether that is the case in the actual world is another matter of course, I don't care enough to look up the stats.

    6. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      bitter much? Divorce much? Too bitter to get married and thus never divorced?

      I can think a a large number of cases where you just sound bitter, and not offer anyone anything of real value, which is probably why you are bitter in the first place.

      Damn.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    7. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by godel_56 · · Score: 1

      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.

    8. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by Tokolosh · · Score: 1

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

      Samuel Johnson

      --
      Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
    9. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by Solandri · · Score: 1

      A similar thing happens to credit card debt stats. Among households which carry a balance, the average (mean) debt is about $15,000. The median credit card debt among those households is about $3500 though. What's going on is that a small fraction of households (about 1 in 10) which carry a credit card balance have a huge amount of credit card debt - like $20,000 to $100,000. So when you use the average (mean), it gets heavily skewed by those few people with huge debt and make the stats look a lot worse than they really are.

      On top of that, the above stats apply only to the households which carry a balance - about a third of all households. Another third pays off their cards every month (no debt), and a third have no credit cards (also no CC debt). So the median credit card debt nationwide is actually $0. But when someone in the press wants to write an article about the horrible state of credit card debt (or divorce), they glom onto those alarming but irrelevant statistics. Many of them have never taken a statistics course so they don't know what they're doing, they just find these juicy numbers which seems to prove their point, so they write an article without really understanding what they're writing about.

      Anyway, if you want the actual marriage/divorce stats, they're on the US Census website. A quick glance over the numbers confirms that the majority of first marriages succeed. The percent of people who have ever been divorced is less than half the percent of people who have ever been married. Eyeballing the numbers, it looks like about 2/3rds of first marriages succeed (do not or have not yet ended in divorce). The divorce numbers are just hyper-inflated by a small number of people (about 3%) who get married and divorced many times.

    10. Re:The worst humanity has to offer by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      Well, even with all the extras taken into account, it seems you end up with a nation wide credit card debt of $5,000 per household on average. Still a serious number, as it's well over one month's median household income (yes I'm conveniently mixing average and median here).

  7. Re: Those Republicans... by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Oddly enough, nobody but them gives a fuck about it.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  8. Re:Let me guess... by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is the internet! Where the men are men, women are bots and kids are FBI agents.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  9. Ton of girls over at apartment #127.0.0.1 by solosaint · · Score: 1

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

    1. Re:Ton of girls over at apartment #127.0.0.1 by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

      That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

  10. Publicity by Bert64 · · Score: 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...

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    1. Re:Publicity by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      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...

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    2. Re:Publicity by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Well how do you know that any given site hasn't been compromised?

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  11. Re:I Am Not a Bot by KatchooNJ · · Score: 1

    I Am Not a Bot

    I somehow can only read that hearing Richard Nixon's voice in my head saying it. heh

    --
    "Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
  12. Crossover in 2045! by swm · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Crossover in 2045! by Z3n1th · · Score: 2

      http://xkcd.com/605/

    2. Re:Crossover in 2045! by alphatel · · Score: 1

      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 years from now
      According to Ashley Madison, every eligible US male will have signed up by 2021

      ...profit

      --
      When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
    3. Re:Crossover in 2045! by nedlohs · · Score: 1

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

  13. Re:I Am Not a Bot by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    And the comment itself in Shatner's voice?

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  14. like "Oktoberfest" without the bier by Thud457 · · Score: 1

    4,000,000 bots? Either that or that's a real sausage-fest.

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  15. Just 4 million ... by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 1

    more morons in the world than previous believed to be.

  16. Re:So 3,999,990 fake women and 10 stupid guys then by Moof123 · · Score: 1

    Still better odds than those guys have in the real world.

  17. A fools and his... by dlenmn · · Score: 1

    A fool and his privacy are soon parted.

  18. Works also without children and without divorce by ffkom · · Score: 1
    In many countries around the world, a married person does not need to give birth or have a divorce to utilize the partner as a financial insurance. Usually, the partner that is making more money will be obliged by law to financially support the lower-income partner.

    The ratio of people who want a marriage for that very reason is astonishing, even planning decades in advance to utilize this as a source of "income" instead of having to do actual work.

    Newspapers and the InterNet are full of people offering themselves "for marriage" to any sufficiently rich and spending-happy partner.

  19. Shit-filled by AndyKron · · Score: 1

    That's because this country is filled with shit.

  20. Considering... by gatfirls · · Score: 1

    ..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%.

  21. Growth Opportunity! by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 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!!

    --

    Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!

    Vote for Bernie in 2016!

    1. Re:Growth Opportunity! by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      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.

  22. why ? by Tom · · Score: 1

    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? ;-)

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  23. NEW members? by MagickalMyst · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.