For the people behind them are all, in fact, married.
Despite the hackers’ threat hanging over the site, yesterday there was no sign of it deterring Britain’s married men from straying. Divorce lawyer Georgina Hamblin, director of leading family law firm Vardags, says not: ‘Whatever you think of the morals of the people who sign up to use sites like Ashley Madison, they do have a right to privacy.
Within an hour of signing up as a new female member, without a profile picture or any identifying details except a user name, age and location, I was contacted by 16 men, 13 of them married.‘I had my suspicions he was cheating and thought I’d set up my own account on a few of these sites so I could have a look,’ she admits. Hacking into a database and threatening to reveal their personal details shouldn’t be condoned.’She is working on a case in which a husband signed up to an extra-marital affairs site in order to catch out his unfaithful wife.
Such is the site’s popularity that 1.2 million married and attached Britons have signed up — so one can only imagine the huge wave of terror felt by them yesterday when a group of hackers threatened to reveal the identities of Ashley Madison’s members.
One of the site’s many opponents, a secretive group calling themselves The Impact Team, claim to have hacked into the online database and stolen the details and private messages.
They break up families, causing so much pain and suffering — and we have to deal with the children and wives and husbands whose lives are destroyed at the click of a button.’Despite the extreme ramifications of joining the site, Ashley Madison is astonishingly easy to use.
Free to join, new members are asked to provide a user name and blurred photograph (the site will pixelate it for you or you can add a ‘disguise’, such as a mask). The introductory package is £39 for 100 credits or £179 for an ‘affair guarantee’ membership of 1,000 credits.
A warm welcome is given to everyone who attends our Singles Parties London and we create a safe and friendly environment for you to meet up to 200 people.
At first glance, the profiles seem innocent enough.
Five credits buys a message to another member and 30 gets you 30 minutes of live chat.