Ashley Madison Fembot Programs: Getting Leaked for Nothing

This past year, we have witnessed several data breaches, but nothing gained as much notoriety as the Ashley Madison leak. A couple of months back, news broke out about the leak of personal information related to the registered users of Ashley Madison, a website dedicated to encourage men and women to engage in extramarital relationships. Over 60 gigabytes of data were released to the dark web, containing names, email addresses, credit card information, and physical addresses were up for anyone to see.

As a result, Ashley Madison ceased operations briefly. It was revealed that a hacktivist group demanded for the shutdown of Ashley Madison, and the data was supposed to be held hostage until the demands of the group are met. It was only after a month of public denouncement and warnings that the group made true of their threats, and the information was released, much to the dismay of its more than 5 million users.

Getting leaked for nothing

The leaked data was analyzed and sorted by various individuals, and soon enough a search database was put up by various websites to allow users to do their own search. As expected, majority of the users of Ashley Madison were male, but surprisingly, the number of genuine female users aren’t as many as what they expected. The data showed that there’s only one genuine, active female user for every 2,700 male users.

A closer study of the data breach revealed that there can be up to 70,000 fake female profiles or fembots created to interact with men and encourage them to engage in a pay-for-play type of perk. This means that on average, paying users of Ashley Madison had a 1 out of 3 chance of paying to send a message to a fembot, and about 4 out of 5 users are enticed to join after interacting with a bot.

The news about the Ashley Madison fembots sparked a class-action suit to be filed against Avid Life Media, the company responsible for Ashley Madison. It was just then revealed that a section in Ashley Madison’s fine print indicated that fembots are essentially used by the website to serve as entertainment for its users.

Scams, rip-offs, and get-rich quick schemes. 

The entire business model of Ashley Madison is based off of a get-rich quick scheme that lures unsuspecting users into thinking that they are getting what they paid for.

It’s not so different in the IT industry. Software companies offer lucrative deals only to find out that you’ve been paying for something that’s essentially for free. Scams, rip-offs, and get-rich quick schemes never last, but anyone without the proper know-how can get scammed just like how the users of Ashley Madison did.

Get expert assistance when planning for an IT-related purchase. Alvarez Technology Group offers IT consultancy services that would point you in the right direction. Contact us at (831) 753-7677 or send us an email at [email protected] to know more about our IT consultancy services.