Ashley Madison: ‘Our site is full of women, and members are growing’ Embattled adultery website Ashley Madison has launched a rearguard action, claiming new sign-ups and more female members in the aftermath of July’s megahack. Self-styled “King of Infidelity” Noel Biderman quit as chief exec of Avid Life Media, the parent firm of Ashley Madison, on Friday. To recap, all hell has broken loose …
A Mr Gerald Ratner would like to disagree with you. He has 500 million reasons why you're wrong.
In the site linked above, there is the following quote as an example of a 'gaffe':
" In 2006, John Pluthero, the UK chairman of Cable & Wireless, sent a memo to staff, which said: "Congratulations, we work for an underperforming business in a crappy industry and it's going to be hell for the next 12 months."
He warned of job losses and added: "If you are worried that it all sounds very hard, it's time for you to step off the bus.""
Mr Pluthero was perfectly, 100%, absolutely, correct. Well, except for the '12 months' part, it took a little longer. But this had been quite clear to anyone who had been following the disasters which senior management (and a lot of the staff) at C&W had been perpetuating over the previous two decades. Hint: For a substantial portion of those two decades, the only profitable part of C&W was C&W (West Indies), which really meant C&W (Jamaica), BarTel in Barbados, and TSTT in Trinidad. When the Jamaican economy went down the rabbithole, so did C&W (West Indies)'s profits, and with it, C&W PLC's profits as a whole. The fact that C&W (Jamaica) was roundly hated by the Jamaican public (see further 'disasters perpetuated by senior management and staff', above) and got really truly hammered in the cell phone market once Digicel arrived from Ireland (prior to Digicel, C&W (Jamaica) had 350,000 cell phone clients; six months after Digicel arrived, Digicel had 250,000 clients and C&W (Jamaica) had 250,000. Six months after that, C&W (Jamaica) was down to 175,000 and still falling, despite literally giving away handsets, while Digicel was fast approaching 500,000, out of a total Jamaican population of around 3 million. It's hard to retain customers when everybody hates your guts. C&W (Jamaica) has changed its name to LIME Jamaica, in an attempt to hide from its past. It's not working. Everybody still hates them.) didn't help C&W (West Indies)'s profits at all.
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Definitely.
Much easier to find a mark there to plant some bank credentials stealing malware there, than to randomly send SPAM about hot "ukrainian" ladies looking for a f*ckmate. All you need is to post a message with a URL to "pictures". You get gullible, in the right location and with a wallet in one hit so no need to send SPAM to half of the internet.
In fact, I am surprised that the Internet pondlife has been passing on this obvious opportunity for so long.
There's no beating around the bush with El Reg: if they say members are growing, then there's clearly a stiffening of resolve at Ashley Madison, perhaps due to a speedy injection of liquid assets.
I know these hackers thrust deeply into Ashley Madison, and you've got to admire their balls, but it looks like Ashley Madison stayed on top the whole time, weren't taken by surprise and have now swallowed their medicine... Etc... Etc...
The numbers rolled out by the analysts didn't sit right with me, purely from experience. I had an Ashley Madison account (and I wasn't in the leaked data, which was nice) and I listed myself as a single male seeking female as at the time, as now, I was single and not looking for a relationship due to a helluva lot of reasons anyone reading this doesn't really care about.
I conversed with a fair few ladies whom passed the turing test and the three ladies I decided to meet (all listed as single seeking male, no ones relationships were harmed by my actions) were, after some thorough inspection and testing, in all probability female.
I'm fair from special or exciting and can't write an interesting introduction to save my life, yet I managed to find at least three of these highly sort after, low in number women. I would image (especially as I spent about twenty bucks) that those spending more were getting suitable results to justify the outlay. I mean, a thousand bucks to potentially meet a hookup doesn't make economic sense when you can get a fair few hours with a hooker for that price. (so I'm told, unlike AM that's something I've not tried).
Try getting a new passport without using a pen !
It's an example because I am currently in the process.. ,you still have to actually sign your name, with a real pen, without writing outside the little box... You can't use a "Nom de Plume" though....
or buy a house, or take a credit ,or a million other things outside of using Facebook and Twitter.....
Unfortunately the Yoof of today appear to be allergic to actually taking the time to write, whereas it can actually be a pleasure.. it also forces one to think before one reacts..
Did you ever actually meet them in the flesh ? Were they in your own region and was that region a major capital... ( I presume that you don't live out in the sticks).
The reason I ask is because I presume that some of the women on AM will actually be prostitutes/escorts who simply use AM et al as online meeting spots. ( I am not, nor ever have been a member of such sites so this it purely conjecture on my behalf).
UV for being frank.. ( just don't tell Frank)
Thanks AC but if I looked like anywhere near George Clooney's league I'd just go to a bar and wouldn't need such sites...
And yes Khaptain, I did meet three as mentioned (though talked to a fair few more) and none were ladies of the night (least, from those I just talked to that I could tell), just bored with dating sites and no time for a relationship with work/life - one was a nurse who worked a such weird shift patterns I struggled to keep track, another a charity worker who basically worked 12-15 hours most days and had little time left to herself and the third we never really got to talking about what she did in the day.
So far from the scandalous liaisons that run in the headlines, but then I guess "hookup website for bored and busy people hacked" wouldn't sell as much...
"Nom de keys - after all, who uses a pen any more?"
Clunk, I have just understood what was meant by "Keys".....
Anyway it would therefore be "nom de touches". (Un clavier a des touches et non pas de clefs)..
---->>>> The facepalm is for me not having understood "keys" in the OP.
I did 'Dateline' in the late '60s. Probably on punched cards. Got 5 names, contacted 3 in London. Lovely girls each (where are you now?) and cost me 3 dinners plus petrol for my Bentley. Central misunderstanding was that my encoded 'love of music' (hearing Bach, playing ocarina) did not match with their similarly-coded 'love' of Jazz. Nothing went further, the 60's were more decent than you've heard. Men have standards too.
The vast majority of female users on dating sites are fake. Women are paid to run them, reply to messages etc, string the bloke along to ensure he pays the subscription fees. It's one of those "earn £20 an hour working from home" job you see advertised. The women will run tens if not hundreds of accounts, replying to messages, adding photos etc.
It's one of those things where no-one can explain why it's legal, however if you read deep into their terms and conditions, there will be rules allowing them to use fake profiles for various spurious reasons... "Market Research" for example.
HAHAHA I can attest that it is in fact industry standard to hire chatters, who are generally real women, to talk and respond to men on these sites. Especially when a site starts out. They have entire offices in the Philippines where people work regular 3 shift days in cubicles and crap. They login with accounts provided by the site owner and generally operate a number of them at the same time. They also usually try to operate three other similar scams, unless you also hire enforcers to ensure the chat people don't stray. It's quite a big business really and only a little corrupt by local standards.
You say "but surely I would know if they weren't primary English speakers" but they usually start out with a script of correct replies with colloquialisms that they can modify to fit. Since they are given bonuses when they convince their users to upgrade or buy extra services, they evolve their writing and persuasion skills on their own.
I suppose if you paid minimum wage + bonuses you could easily hire American/UK/Australian women too, but as everybody knows outsourcing is the proper way!
Casaloco,
Err not in my experience matey (London/SE England) ~ 9 years ago prior to meeting my awesome wifey.
I was then in my mid thirties, had just split up with wife#1, I was/am nothing at all special in the looks department, but am usually well dressed, courteous and apparently fun to be around.
I had a HECK of a lot of fun and a surprising amount of dates with 'nice' girls via match.com, and a lot of 'did that really happen to me?' Via alt.com.
But a sample size of 1 isn't necessarily terribly helpful...
Ymdidv.
Jay
If you're not in it you can't win it. That is, a share of the millions in compensation that lawyers are fighting for.
Obviously, not in this round of kick the dog, but the potential to be involved in the next data splurge is probably quite high, given that security will never outfox the NSA and other malevolent data hackers.
Not so much, after talking to some friends/colleagues of the non-IT persuasion, most of them thought 'Ashley Madison' was some a new Kardashians-type thing or single-female-lawyer type programme.
* Someone Elses Problem - for those who've not read 'Hitchhikers.
Fat chance of a money-making website calling itself Noel Biderman ever raking it in from anyone who prizes her / his intelligence as much as her/his carnality. That this outfit had to deck itself out with so hilarious a fiction to begin with says all there is to say about the veracity of anything else it might claim (as well as the gullibility of those who actually threw money at it.)
But now poor Ashley is damaged goods. Time, methinks, for another circus tent to loud-hail the punters. Noelle Bidmebed might possibly be a nice little earner but it's difficult to see a tagline in there. "Chelsea Tractor: A Good Ride Guaranteed" has a lot more going for it (and especially with non-UK audiences who haven't a clue as to its provenance) but El Reg readers can surely come up with something even more enticing.
There may be money in it but the primary objective is to spread love and happiness amongst the 627,894 website members who will sign up in the first 10 minutes. 'Onest.
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