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It was a discreet dating site for married people seeking affairs, but what happened when hackers exposed the 35 million users?
Set up in 2002, Ashley Madison was an online service for people seeking extramarital trysts. It was launched by Canadian businessman, Darren Morgenstern, when the internet was just starting to come into its own.
The dating website’s tagline was: ‘Life is short. Have an affair.’ Controversial? Yes. Popular? Very! It apparently had between 60 and 80 million users worldwide. While critics condemned it as a ‘business built on the back of broken hearts’ the user count was proof of the lure of sex and discretion.
The website became increasingly well-known – controversy helped – with its racy advertisements, banned by several channels.
But in 2015 the fun came to a crashing halt. Over 30 million users’ private information was leaked by unknown hackers – one of the largest
leaks in internet history. It wreaked havoc on untold numbers of families and also exposed many celebs who were Ashley Madison clients.
Now, a new Netflix documentary Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal has delved into the infamous hack that shook philanderers around the world in a new three-part series.
Speaking on the documentary, Marc Morgenstern, former creative director at Ashley Madison said: ‘It was founded by my brother in the early 2000s.’ There was a stat that 30 per cent of people on dating websites were married.
‘An insane figure,’ Darren concluded. And so he came up with Ashley Madison – a discreet dating site designed for adulterers. At that time, Ashley and Madison were the two most popular girls names in the US and Canada, so they were put together to create the moniker.
Marc Morgernstern added: ‘[The names] seemed a little upper-class so it made it seem like the site had a certain pedigree.’
By 2007, sports lawyer and estate agent Noel Biderman was named CEO of Ashley Madison. Noel told CNN reporters: ‘The perfect affair is not just meeting someone, it’s meeting someone and not getting discovered. So when you have an affair in the workplace – which is our biggest competitor – it’s bound to be uncovered.’ He made himself the face of the company and brought his longtime friend, Evan Back, on board to be the company’s top sales representative.
Evan’s job was to recruit men who were willing to upload their credit card details and pay to buy credits. Credits allowed you to send messages and once they ran out you had to buy more. It did not have a monthly subscription and worked on a ‘pay as you speak’ model so married men could meet married women. It cost £250 for 1,000 credits, £149 for 500, and £49 for 100 credits.
Women were able to join and become members for free. Th
