TORONTO:In the wake of a massive data hack, Avid Life Media, the parent company of Ashley Madison, says its website is still thriving and claims that hundreds of thousands of new users signed up for the site in this last week alone.
“Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated,” the company said in a news release issued Monday.
“The company continues its day-to-day operations even as it deals with the theft of its private data by criminal hackers.”Last month, unidentified hackers, known as “The Impact Team,” obtained user information for the site’s 36 million members and have been releasing the data in waves.
In its statement Monday, Avid Life Media also took aim at an article published by tech website by Gizmodo that suggested very few females were actively using Ashley Madison’s site.
“Last week, a reporter who claimed to analyze the stolen data made incorrect assumptions about the meaning of fields contained in the leaked data,” the company said.
“This reporter concluded that the number of active female members on Ashley Madison could be calculated based on those assumptions. That conclusion was wrong.”
According to the company’s statement, last week, 87,596 women signed up for the service and women sent more than 2.8 million messages through Ashley Madison’s platform over the same time period.
“In the first half of this year the ratio of male members who paid to communicate with women on our service versus the number of female members who actively used their account … was 1.2 to 1,” the company said.
“These numbers are the main reason that Ashley Madison is the number one service for people seeking discrete relationships.”