How Has Ashley Madison changed Since It Got Hacked

If you have been on the internet for a while, then you may have heard of the Ashley Madison data breach incident. But don’t worry-if you haven’t heard of it. Hookup Sites has you covered. Here’s some information for you on this news.

The Ashley Madison Data Breach Incident

The Ashley Madison Agency, better known as Ashley Madison, is an online social networking service meant for the purpose of dating. It is a subsidiary of Toronto based media company Ruby Corp. It serves to market mostly to the people that are either in committed relationships or married. So while Ashley Madison is considered a dating service, it was specifically geared toward those who are in attached relationships looking to have an affair. Since their inception they have expanded from affair dating to include those in open relationships and multi-partner relationships.

In July of 2015, a certain group that calls themselves ‘The Impact Team” were guilty of stealing all of the user data from The Ashley Madison Agency and threatened to reveal the names of the users as well as their personal information, such as real names, home addresses, search histories and credit and credit card transaction records, if the commercial website failed to close itself immediately. It is said that The Ashley Madison Agency enables the concept of extramarital affairs. Following the copying of this information done by the group, they also leaked about 25 gigabytes of the company’s data or more on the 18th and 20th of August.

At one point in time, the website Ashley Madison had about 50 million happy customers and users even reaching up to the amount of $1 billion. After all the data breach incidences, Ashley Madison has now shot up to its old popularity again. New accounts have been found to be registered in numbers reaching 152,035 and above on a monthly basis. This only leaves us wondering as to how many new accounts are really created on The Ashley Madison Agency per day and the total figure on a yearly basis.

After giving it a little time as each day passed, the data breach incident soon found itself buried and topped with other scandals and events coming into the limelight. This meant that the focus had shifted from the Ashley Madison data breach incident and now people could use it almost just like before.

Women were mostly seen running accounts on social networking dating sites. On being asked why they preferred this platform they answered that it is better to meet a person that their spouse would not run into at the local store or market. In other words, the social networking site has become somewhat of a less risky alternative when it comes to cheating on one’s partner. Later in further reports, it was found that the user ratio of the males against the females was accurately 1 to 1. This came as a shock to many that the majority of the female population on the site were found to be bots put into use for the purpose of ranking up the site or for the sole purpose of increasing the number of females on the site as compared to males and seeking attention online.

Changes Observed in Ashley Madison After the Incident

Now, you must be wondering what were the significant changes that occurred in Ashley Madison after the data of the users was stolen by the group? Read on to find out more about this in detail.

Internal Shifts

For the first change, we see in the transformation of Ashley Madison that the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) was fired from the company Avid Life Media. Later on, the name of the company was changed, meaning the Toronto-based Avid Life Media now came to be known as Ruby Corp. Also later on in 2017, they agreed to settle two dozen lawsuits stemming from the breach for $11.2 million.

Implementation of New Teams

A brand-new internship team was put on duty, and this internship team was inclusive of a chief information security officer and a chief technology officer.

The subscription to the social networking dating site was designed in such a way that the women on the site can make use of the service for free. While on the other hand, the men using the site would have to pay a monthly fee. All of this was done for the sake of maintaining an even balance within its membership.

Extra Measures Taken for Safety and Privacy Purposes

In regard to online privacy and security reasons, The Ashley Madison Agency or Ashley Madison as you can call it has learned its lesson from experiences in the past. This is why it has made sure that the security of the users is their priority and no leak or breach of the data occurs again. Three types of monitoring are seen by Ashley Madison and these are human monitoring, machine learning and then automated learning/monitoring. This is implemented to keep out all of the profiles that do not fit into the criteria that the company wants. Some of these unwanted profiles include the profiles of spammers, scammers and those of sex workers. Many top cam sites like Chaturbate and others have followed AM's lead. Accounts that are seen violating the guidelines or terms and conditions of the social networking website are soon suspended and banned from further interaction on the website.

Risk-Free Operation

Ashley Madison’s users are carrying on onto the site without any risks involved in the matter. The users do not have to worry about the privacy breach anymore; however, most of them believe in keeping their private information such as their sex lives under their hat. They do not tend to disclose such matters online as well as in front of their spouses, or even their judgmental friends.

When it comes to being on the lookout for partners online, most of the users have made use of the Ashley Madison website, meaning that they have come to terms with some of the boundaries of the risks. As mentioned before, many times people consider the website as less of a risk as compared to real life. This is because there is less of a chance that people they encounter on this particular website will have chances of crossing paths with their wives or husbands as they probably live in a different part of the continent/country.

If you were someone that was scared off by the Ashley Madison hack, you were not alone. However, the popular dating service has clearly taken their security breach seriously and members are taking note. If you are interested in finding out more check out our in-depth Ashley Madison Review.