IT’S BEEN OVER a month since extramarital affair website Ashley Madison was hacked and the user details posted for all to see.
We know a lot about the men who paid for the service, from Christian blogger Sam Rader, to US reality TV star Josh Duggar.
But what about the women who used it? Well, it appears there are not very many of them at all.
Gizmodo writer Annalee Newlitz analysed the site’s user database and claims that almost all of the five million female accounts are fakes, created and maintained by Ashley Madison employees.
How did Newlitz discover this? She dug deep and discovered lots of test accounts (most female) that ended with ashleymadison.com, and more than 350 accounts for women with the same, highly unusual last name.
And if some of the profiles are indeed created by real women, they certainly don’t use the website as frequently as men do.
Newlitz discovered that only 1,492 women ever checked their messages on the site, compared to 20 million men – and 2,409 women used the chat function, as opposed to 11 million lads.
Newlitz writes:
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.
“Ashley Madison is a site where tens of millions of men write mail, chat, and spend money for women who aren’t there,” she said.
