In August 2015, hackers exposed the personal information of millions of users of Ashley Madison, a site that markets itself to people who want to cheat on their significant others.
This led to an explosive aftermath and, celebrities like Josh Duggar were exposed and it even reportedly leading to two suicides. Plus, a deep dive into the data revealed that the users were overwhelmingly male, and many of the “women” on the site may have been automated bots. But yeah, people are still using it to cheat on their partners.
CNN reports that the website’s user count now has 43 million users. At the time of the hack, that count was at 39 million. If the numbers are accurate, that means that four million people decided signing up for Ashley Madison was a good idea, despite the fact that there’s a chance they could be exposed.
Avid Life Media, the parent company of Ashley Madison, declined to comment to CNN, but they have said in the past that the data of active users puts the ratio of men to women at 1.2:1, not the 95:1 ratio that has been reported elsewhere. They also insisted they have beefed up their online security since the hack. But that may not save the company from the class-action lawsuits from users who had their information released to the public.
It’s not hard to say for sure why millions of people have flocked to the site lately but it might just prove, once and for all, that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.