Ashley Madison's chief strategy officer, Paul Keable, believes that monogamy doesn't work for everyone. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Keable said that people would be cheating whether the controversial dating site existed or not.
Millions of private secrets were revealed when user information for Ashley Madison, a dating site for married users seeking discreet affairs, leaked in 2015. A former high-ranking employee of the company told filmmakers that the company had been "gambling with people's lives" in a recently released docuseries.
Former company employees, journalists who covered the scandal, customers unmasked by the leak, and jilted spouses share their perspectives on the notorious data breach, how it changed the dating site, and the ultimate cost it had on the site's users in the Netflix chart topper "Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal," which was released last Wednesday.
After the breach, Ashley Madison underwent a "complete rehaul" to "rebuild trust," and now boasts 85 million users, with about four million new users signing up each year, spokesperson Paul Keable told Fox News Digital.
Director Toby Paton noted in a news release that, rather than "berating" people who joined the site, filmmakers aimed to "explore why they were drawn [to it] ... what were they looking for? What was going on in their relationships? And, crucially: What was their partner's side of the story."
Established by Darren Morgenstern in 2001, the service launched with the slogan "when monogamy becomes monotony," which later transformed into the more risqué "Life is short. Have an affair."
Nearly 40 million people were exposed when Ashley Madison experienced a data breach in 2015. Former employees claimed that the company justified its business model based on the founder's belief that spouses cheating on each other was inevitable; their site merely met a need by facilitating it. They discovered that 30 percent of individuals on existing dating sites were already married, according to the documentary.
The company enjoyed rapid growth, gaining attention through provocative advertisements and appearances by CEO Noel Biderman that elicited both righteous indignation and, apparently, users from TV viewers. Biderman frequently appeared with his wife, and the couple asserted that the service was incapable of "creating" cheaters.
Despite the site's promises of anonymity and security, its data security defenses were inadequate to safeguard the 37 million users across 40 countries it had amassed by 2015. Former IT employees described how lax the site's security measures were, while employees handling billing and customer service shared how they would dismiss concerned spouses inquiring about suspicious credit card charges.
In retrospect, Back declared, "It was like gambling with people’s lives."
That year, a group known as "The Impact Team" hacked the company, which the documentary speculates may have consisted of just one person, or even an employee of the site's parent company, Avid Life Media. The hacker demanded that the company shut down its operations within 30 days, or they would release its users' data on the "dark web."
Although the company hired a cybersecurity team, they did not comply with the hackers' demands. Seven days later, the hacker group carried out its threats, releasing data including information from people who believed they had permanently deleted their accounts – a service that the company charged a fee for, according to the documentary. A second data dump included users' credit card details and even nude photos.
The company offered a $500,000 reward to anyone who could identify the hacker – who remains unknown to this day.
Journalists and curious individuals began scanning the lists for recognizable names – and websites were soon created that allowed users to enter email addresses to determine if they had ever had an account.
Even CEO Biderman's data was not secure, and his private and business emails became publicly available. The former CEO did not participate in an interview for the documentary, but he provided filmmakers with a written statement affirming that he "remained a committed husband and father."
Despite exhaustive efforts by law enforcement and cybersecurity experts brought in by the company, the identity of the elusive Impact Team was never determined, according to the docuseries.
"Now, we look at [security] as a whole-of-company approach," Ashley Madison's Keable said on Friday. "Every person's job is security, every person's job is discretion."
Protecting its users is a "Sisyphean task," Keable acknowledged. "We need to push the security boulder up the hill every day."
"I think there's a misunderstanding with the idea that [Ashley Madison was in the] wrong, given that we've seen since then that multiple companies have had similar types of events. It's part of the maturation process of the online community world," he said.
Among the celebrities named in the Ashley Madison breach was Josh Duggar of "19 Kids and Counting," who was later convicted on child pornography charges.
"I have been the biggest hypocrite ever," he said in a statement at the time. "While espousing faith and family values, I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the internet and this became a secret addiction and I became unfaithful to my wife. I am so ashamed of the double life that I have been living and am grieved for the hurt, pain and disgrace my sin has caused my wife and family, and most of all Jesus and all those who profess faith in Him."
"Jersey Shore" star Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi vehemently denied reports that her husband was on the site.
"I'm lucky if he knows how to even use a computer, yet go on Ashley Madison to cheat on me," she stated at the time. "It's so stupid, and we honestly think, like, someone is trying to f--k with us, because this isn't the first story that Jionni's been cheating on me."
Sam and Nia Rader, a popular Christian vlogging couple during the 20
