Talk:Ashley Madison

Sources

A couple references for new material. TransUtopian (talk) 15:03, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Cohen, Alex (2008-03-12). "Web Site Makes Millions by Connecting Cheaters". National Public Radio.
• Matyszczyk, Chris (2010-03-02). "Oscars ban online dating site ad". CNet.
• Baute, Nicole (2010-04-07). "Female newlyweds flock to join cheaters club: Infidelity service Ashley Madison says the honeymoon is over fast for GTA newlyweds, particularly women, as they hunt affairs". Toronto Star. (WebCite URL)

Lies

Why is there no mention how people have seen evidence that they get responses from their employees and/or robots posing as candidates? People are told they're "hot" without even having a picture up. People that don't have a "site" up (page/profile on their website?), get "interested" candidates. This reeks of fraud and fakeness. Someone should take the time to investigate all this, collect the evidence, and write up a section on this... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.15.250.252 (talk) 15:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

That would be original research. 206.116.61.16 (talk) 22:32, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/toronto-woman-injured-while-typing-fake-profiles-for-dating-website-sues-for-20-million/article15368872/ --68.148.81.100 (talk) 21:13, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

That's the idea. Find info already out there, source it and post it. OR can be useful as a tool to this end, but can not appear in the article. 76.102.148.112 (talk) 08:53, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Criticism sites

Unless sites like ashleymadisonscam and ashleymadisonsucks have some sort of significance besides being a complaint site, they should not be listed in this article. (By "significance" I mean are they well-known opposition sites such that they've been mentioned in articles about Ashley Madison?) Don't add external links unless they meet the criteria of WP:EL. ... discospinster _talk 16:37, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I removed the reference to ashleymadisonsucks.com again because there is no indication that it is anything other than a complaints blog and thus not a reliable source by Wikipedia's criteria. Please see WP:RS for more information. ... discospinster _talk 16:12, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

AshleyMadisonSucks.com is an objective site that has no affiliate links, and no advertisements. It is cited in over 60 online publications and receives over approximately 30,000 uniques per month. It is HIGHLY relevant to a page about Ashley Madison, and even more relevant to the section on controversy regarding Ashley Madison, as it is the only aggregation of user stories specifically about Ashley Madison on the Internet. However, aside from user complaints, the site also contains articles that cite references and original research showing information about the suspected scams. To remove this from the Criticism section is to pretend that there is no actual criticism, which is not objective, and turns this entire page into an advertisement for AshleyMadison, whose IPs are incidentally all over this page's edits and creation history... (e.g.; username: Ashley Madison, or user IP: 38.113.163.225, which happens to be Avid Life Media's IP, and matches with email received from Evan Back, their VP of Sales). To remain objective, we must present both sides, and that is what the inclusion of AshleyMadisonSucks does. VerilyVeritas (talk) 20:01, 11 June 2010 (UTC)VerilyVeritas

First of all, a site called "ashleymadisonsucks.com" is not a site that can be called "objective". Secondly, the site is not the only source of criticism against AshleyMadison.com; there are several other references in the article from reliable sources such as ABC News and the Toronto Sun, so there is no danger of the article being an advertisement for AshleyMadison.com. The problem with ashleymadisonsucks.com (AMS) is that it is an anonymous blog with the sole purpose of collecting opinions about AM and its alleged/suspected scams. This pretty much makes it the complete opposite of what Wikipedia considers to be a reliable source. Even the Microsoft article (or the separate Criticism of Microsoft article) doesn't link to sites like microsoftsucks.org or what-have-you. If AMS itself contains links to other reliable references criticizing AM, then those references themselves can be referred to within the article rather than simply linking to the anonymous AMS blog. ... discospinster _talk 21:56, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree, not only are these sites unverifiable and void of any real evidence or citations, they appear to be bogus altogether. It seems to me these sites were actually created by Ashley Madison, which already has a history of reverse psychology tactics (mymarriagematters.org). These sites appear to fall in line with that strategy. Most "criticisms" are quickly refuted, and many of the links within the pages link TO Ashley Madison. If the sites were truly exposes of Ashley Madison, wouldn't they be filled with real stories of member dissatisfaction? In fact most entries to the "blog" tend to promote the website. I think this article and possibly this discussion page are being manipulated by the dubious efforts of Ashley Madison.Robquail (talk) 16:53, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I Disagree. The site is HIGHLY relevant to the Controversy section, and contains original research on the subject. Information contained in a "Controversy" section of a wikipedia page should cite controversy and criticism, as well as responses by the company to that criticism. Your censorship seems prejudiced. AMS has been referenced on "Ojbective" sites like ABS-CBN News, Mumbrella.com, and Slate.com, to name a few. This is valid information, and the site has substantial value in providing both ex-customer opinions and experiences, as well as the original research the site itself provides, which is not readily available anywhere else.Daringly007 (talk)

Again, the site is an anonymous blog and therefore has no oversight. It could be written by anybody for any reason. If the blog has been referenced by other well-known sites that that has to be shown. Whether the information contained in it is true or false does not matter. Wikipedia relies on verifiability of the information that is presented. Furthermore, as already noted, there is a "Controversy" section in the article with references from reliable sources already. ... discospinster _talk 01:06, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

From the policy page Wikipedia:Verifiability:

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party (independent), published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; this avoids plagiarism, copyright violations, and unverifiable claims being added to articles. Sources should directly support the material as it is presented in an article, and should be appropriate to the claims made.

... discospinster _talk 01:09, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, let's look at the policy in reference to AMS: it is a 3rd party (independent) published source. The claims made in the controversy section of the article are all easily verifiable. Are there a collection of user/ex-user complaints on AMS? Yes... that is documented by the site quite clearly and can't be doubted. Are the two articles referenced about Ashley Madison's demographics, and about the Terms and Conditions of AM versus their other claims based on verifiable fact, and free from copyright infringement? If you actually read the articles, you will see that they are. http://www.ashleymadisonsucks.com/my-ashley-madison-story/fake-profiles-online-hosts-or-market-research.html http://www.ashleymadisonsucks.com/my-ashley-madison-story/women-greatly-under-represented-males-greatly-over-represented.html

The articles independently written on AMS include facts based on Alexa and Compete rankings and statistics, as well as a direct analysis of what AM says versus their terms and conditions for the past 6 years. This all falls under "verifiable claims made in articles" and "fact-checking and accuracy".

The content of individual complaints are NOT being cited as reliable sources of information, any more than rip-off-report's or yelp's user complaints can individually be taken as reliable. But taken as aggregate, one can say that there are masses of complaints on the site about Ashley Madison, and that's exactly how it's being referred to on the Wikipedia page... Unlike the sites that others keep putting up here that are in fact affiliate pages for Ashley Madison, AshleyMadisonSucks.com has no links to other products, etc., further boosting the 'objective' feel of the site.

It seems that Wikipedia's primary concern is with copyright infringement and verifiability, which is easily verified that these are original articles (take any section of text and put it into google with quotes). These ARE independently written articles that include fact-checking and verifiable claims. AshleyMadisonSucks.com has been referenced by other independent sites: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/04/21/10/online-service-makes-adultery-easier http://www.slate.com/id/2248023 VerilyVeritas (talk)

DiscoSpinster, I believe that the information presented above fulfills your request for "significance", as it cites that this site has been mentioned in numerous articles about Ashley Madison, and has provided links to several. WooRank shows AMS has over 60 backlinks to it from other sites online referring to the stories. This is a significant site relative to the topic, and while other sites make tangential mention of suspected scams or suspected fraud, this is the only site of it's kind that presents logical, researched arguments with verifiable information (on top of the "user complaints"). This really should stand. Daringly007 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:34, 16 June 2010 (UTC).

Sorry, but it is a very common practice in online marketing to create your own online fake "consumer advocate" website that praises the product with very faint damnation; it's a well-known variation on "astroturfing." The coverage the website receives at AMS is overwhelmingly positive, and in my opinion it is very likely part of Ashley Madison's promotional efforts. Unless it can be proven not to be, it will remain out of the article. 70.173.183.85 (talk) 05:58, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Do we have Ashley Madison PR people scrubbing this page clean or something? For such a highly controversial organization, this wiki page has an astonishingly short and stubby criticism section.

--69.125.144.110 (talk) 17:33, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Sources

Hi, there has been a request to protect this page against edits based on a personal website. Instead of protecting, I've reverted the material for now. Could anyone wishing to restore it please make sure you have a reliable source? You can read our policy on sourcing, and what we mean by a "reliable source," at WP:SOURCES. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 02:08, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit Request

Should the link to Sex.com be deleted? It seems unrelated to the article and might be link spam. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:645:8101:61BF:110:36F3:DA77:7FCA (talk) 17:31, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

{{editsemiprotected}} 'FIXED' Cannot FIX this because of the page protection on the page. Sorry but this should be changed "who, 2 years after founding Ashley Madison was pursued by the FCC for deceptive business practices in an online "scheme that dupes consumers"." to for deceptive business practices in an UNRELEATED online "scheme that dupes consumers"." this scheme had NOTHING to do with the company and because of the page protection it cannot be modified. and in fact it should be REMOVED altogther since it had NOTHING to do with Ashley Madison but with Darren Morganstern and was COMPLETELY UNRELATED and should go on a page about Darren Morganstern and NOT ashley madison. 38.113.163.225 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) Moved from WP:RFPP by Tbhotch^{Talk C.} 22:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

If you had an account (a confirmed account), you would be able to modify it. Wikipedia does not have an article about Darren Morganstern. I suppose that's why his information and related activities are here. I'm going to leave this request to editors who are familiar with this subject. This is a content-related/dispute discussion.  Davtra  ^(talk) 05:29, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

The term "online dating service" doesn't completely/accurately describe Ashley Madison -- we are also a Social Network. Is it possible to add this to the description? Yes, I'm from Ashley Madison. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.113.163.225 (talk) 15:40, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't generally take someone's word for it that they're from a company. Anyone off the street could log on with an IP, or start an account with the name of a company in it (though there are policies to restrict that idea). There is a specialized mechanism WP:OTRS for dealing with copyright clearance for certain images, but it's not designed to handle text revision. Instead, it is best for the company to put up a webpage, press release etc. that can then be cited as a WP:reliable source. A mere press release or web page is a WP:Primary source, used with caution, not to support negative claims about other people for example, and not quoted for 'unduly self-serving' statements i.e. ads. However, I feel it would be appropriate to cite a company web page to support a statement that a company is a "social network" - or at least, describes itself as one. Failing that, a company with resources rarely has trouble procuring actual newspaper articles that say things it wants to get out, and Wikipedia usually swallows those down without complaint. Wnt (talk) 14:38, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

I wish to open my account in this site Please help me AKKY BATAR (talk) 13:28, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Link Changes

Looks like someone is changing the link over and over for SEO purposes. --108.8.13.224 (talk) 02:24, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Advertising Website

Is it me, or does this Wikipedia article appear to be little else but a list of advertisements? Isn't this kind of thing banned on Wikipedia? Why the hell does around 85% of this article display advertisement/failed advertisement bids for this company?

I feel this content should be removed. What do you guys think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.37.26.242 (talk) 01:09, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

How Come There is Only Limited Negative Information in the Criticism Section???

I'm working on an article and screenplay and have been researching Ashley Madison, here are my questions about their Wikipedia page:

How come there are no references to the scores of web complaints that Ashley Madison posts fake profiles (along with fake pictures from other sites and some consumer product packaging), and that instead of a site for real affairs, the purpose of the site is to take money from gullible users? And, because users do not want to give their real name, they are hesitant to file formal complaints against the site, e.g., with the Better Business Bureau, state attorney generals. In fact, Ashley Madison has the perfect scam model - it's like when you get screwed over by a partner during a criminal act - who you gonna tell?

Or that it owns websites that post fake glowing reviews? According to a 2/11/11 Forbes magazine, "A WhoIs search will reveal that at least one of these sites, www.AshleyMadisonScams.com, perhaps unsurprisingly, is registered to Avid Dating Life (which is affiliated with the site)."

Or that they own ashleymadisonsucks.com, and on that site there are no complaints from angry customers, instead there are postings for services that Ashley Madison offers, that they want users to click on?

Or that Ashley Madison has a team of people that specifically manage its web image/reputation (including its Wikipedia page) to ensure that no negative information is posted.

C'mon Wikepedia users, defeat Ashley Madison in its tactics to ensure that Wikipedia includes only unbiased information. And lastly, based on some of the comments on this edit page, it appears some were posted by people associated with Ashley Madison. Which brings me to my last point, I'm now thinking of writing an article about how web sources (like Wikipedia, Amazon reviews, etc.) have over the years become more and more subject to companies posting false information, and that there is nothing truly one can trust on the web anymore.

The demise of Wikipedia, the canary in the coalmine for lack of truth in online content... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.69.191 (talk) 20:54, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Should the phrase "marketed to people with absolutely no morals" be in here???Wulfysanjose (talk) 22:41, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Verifying the leaked data

There are a lot of different levels of "veracity" here - beginning with the reported fake email addresses in the AM database itself - but from the Wikipedia point of view, it's important for us to have some way to validate what is contained in the published leak, to support future research. The problem is, Wikipedia policy is against linking copyright violations, which this probably is, and until the reportedly active credit card numbers are all cancelled by the banks, it may even be illegal to link it in the U.S. Therefore, we need some strong and reliable proxies in order to preserve for our history what was actually the real archive.

One method is the PGP key. For example, this reddit post, which reddit says was posted three days ago, claimed to give a PGP key whose signature should be checked. The problem though is that the deadline was already known, so anybody could have posted that just to mess with our heads. What we need, therefore, is some good attestations of the Impact Team PGP key from as soon after the initial announcement of the hack as possible, to which any circulation files might now or later be compared. These sources are not themselves prohibited by EL policy, so can someone recommend some? Wnt (talk) 14:02, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, for the lack of someone who knows what they're doing I'll say what I found so far. Many news sources are citing "the Motherboard website" for recent Impact Team data; this is http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hackers-dump-more-ashley-madison-data and related articles. That link has an image of a PGP signed message in it. I took the last line of that to search ( [1]) and found a text version at hydraze.org ( [2] - that's not a reliable source, but you can inspect manually to confirm this is the text for the Motherboard image) Now that I had a signed message, I took a version of the alleged public key from an analysis at the Include Security blog ( [3] ). Trying gpg4win, a package that honestly I haven't used before, I got back a sort of answer hazy try again response, "Not enough information to check signature validity: Signed on 2015-08-20 00:15 by impactteam@mailtor.net (Key ID: 0x74ABAA38). The validity of the signature cannot be verified."

I'm not sure, but I *think* this means that the message simply isn't long enough for the signature to be cryptographically strong, in which case some other message confirmed by media to be authentic might provide the desired validation of the public key. And of course, once we have the public key we can give people a tool to validate anything ... provided Impact Team doesn't get hacked, that is! :) Wnt (talk) 19:16, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Potential customer lawsuits against Ashley Madison

There needs to be a section on Ashley Madison's potential or real liability to its customers.True Observer (talk) 18:49, 19 August 2015 (UTC) True Observer (talk) 18:49, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

There isn't any sourcing and why would we report on something that might happen? Jonathan biderman (talk) 19:45, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Proposed change to lead.

The site allows anyone to register any name with zero verification (not even the usual conformation email) then charges money to delete accounts.[4] This makes the alleged list of users completely unreliable. I propose that we mention this prominently in the lead paragraph. Comments? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:43, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Seems unnecessary. The article is about Ashley Madison specifically, not the data breach. Even in the article on the Breach itself, the only people mentioned have publicly admitted to having those accounts. I'm not against mentioning it in the article but it seems overzealous to put it prominently in the lead especially when the breach is important regardless of the information's verifibility. --Flounder19 (talk) 20:21, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

It is definitely worth mentioning; but sources I read said that was only early on and later they verified email addresses. (Of course, with millions of users out there I imagine there were a couple of times when some obnoxious person hacked a victim's email accounts, credit cards etc. and signed up with them at sites like Ashley Madison just for fun) Wnt (talk) 21:51, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I've added The Intercept ref to the lead section to address this concern. It appears that a non-zero number of accounts were set up as pranks, which the person would then have to pay to have the company promise it was "deleted" (but they weren't - risking a leak) and allegedly netting 1.7 million from account deletion fees per year.-- Callinus (talk) 22:42, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I reworked the section on the full delete option a bit to include that reference too. I don't love the way it currently appears in the lead but I left it in since I couldn't think of a better way to say it without overhauling the whole thing. --Flounder19 (talk) 00:04, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Jason DeZwirek

Is Kaboose's CEO Jason DeZwirek the same Jason DeZwirek who, according to the Ashley Madison data breach of August 2015, is the majority stakeholder of Avid Life Media? if so, it's interesting that the CEO of a company which publishes a website "which focuses on family activities and parenting" also publishes a website for facilitating extramarital affairs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.56.144.234 (talk) 14:52, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I haven't looked into this, but I take it you're familiar with portfolio diversification? :) Wnt (talk) 16:45, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Is it appropriate to compare the "control" suicide rate?

According to List of countries by suicide rate, 19.4 of 100,000 males in the United States commit suicide per year. This means that if you take a random sample of 34 million males, without adjusting other demographic parameters, if they all came from the U.S., you would expect 18 per day to commit suicide. Therefore, the occurrence of 2 suicides over a month's time is not really a solid proof that the situation is responsible for an overall increase in the suicide rate. I understand that WP:original research places limits on how much of that I could say - after all, to do it right, you should break down subpopulations by country, age, and other parameters. However, I do think it would be appropriate to have a background sentence that says something like "On average, 1 per 1.8 million male Americans commits suicide each day." (It seems hard to believe that this is true, but it's what the article mentioned above says, and it's cited)

I feel like there's a certain kind of BLP involved in not making it out like the victims in this are somehow unstable and about to go off at any time, and I hate to see data without a control to compare. Wnt (talk) 19:59, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

@Wnt: "On average, 1 per 1.8 million male Americans commits suicide each day." - that sounds 365 times too many.

The reason for that material being included is in light of early arguments in the media that the media shouldn't expose the details of specific details. That was also part of arguments against looking up details of colleagues (or parents at a school).

The suggestion in the sources is that reported suicides is the result of widespread reporting (rather than just the breach per se.)

The total number compared to the background rate is not needed. -- Callinus (talk) 09:49, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

@Callinus: - It may seem like 365 times too many, that I agree... but the stat we have is 19.4 per 100,000 yearly, or nearly 1 in 5,000 - the lifetime odds are 1 in 121. [5] As it happens I am skeptical of this, always suspicious that the smarter killers dispose of their victims as suicide statistics, but it's the data we have, and any such paranoid explanations hold equally well for AM customers. So we expect a 2-in-34-million figure to be utterly swamped by the 1-in-5000 figure by the time a year passes. Wnt (talk) 16:44, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

@Callinus: - On second thought, I didn't understand what you were saying about taking stuff out; that's not what I suggested. So I might as well do the edit, because it really isn't all that dramatic: [6] Just something to allow a little context on the issue, especially since the number is such a surprise to both of us. Wnt (talk) 16:51, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

@Wnt: it's not relevant - Suicide in the United States explores the issue. WP:SYNTH means that you can't publish your own figures or combine sources to reach conclusions that the original sources didn't reach.

The key issue is the role the media has in enabling the potential extortion demands and risk of severe humiliation by choosing to frame their reporting on the data breach as a moral panic - rather than asking serious questions about the ethics of internet privacy.

-- Callinus (talk) 23:34, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Note, I'll leave it for now but it is a synth issue. -- Callinus (talk) 23:37, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

More from Newitz

The article refers to Annalee Newitz's analysis of the released data, but there is a more recent post where she retracts her 12,000-woman estimate. We should update the article to reflect her subsequent analysis. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:38, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I have revised the Newitz section to reflect the above retraction (and many thanks, User:Aeusoes1). This was after writing the comment in the next entry. deisenbe (talk) 15:42, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Problem with figures

If 11 million men used the chat system, but only 2,409 females, as the article says today, who were the men chatting with? deisenbe (talk) 12:37, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

How is that a problem with figures? 82.221.131.135 (talk) 21:17, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Bots, obviously. Or other men (pretending to be women, or acknowledging they were men). Or they logged on and found nobody to chat with, which is still technically "using" the chat system. But the evidence suggests bots.104.244.254.162 (talk) 21:32, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

bitcoin

Some users reported receiving extortion emails[51] requesting 1.05 in bitcoins (exactly C$300)

Should read "1.05 in bitcoin (approximately C$300 at the time)"

82.221.131.135 (talk) 21:16, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

So much stale discussions here

Can I archive the talk page contents? 8521105559a (talk) 09:27, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

UDP tag

@Doc James, could you explain the basis for adding the "edited in return for undisclosed payments," UDP, tag?--agr (talk) 02:47, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

These accounts among others[7] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:07, 6 August 2017 (UTC)