Sarah Leamon: The first big Ashley Madison leak happened weeks ago but there’s still no end in sight...

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      I first remember hearing about the Ashley Madison dating site in the early 2000s. I vividly recall watching a daytime talk show on infidelity, when Ashley Madison’s CEO appeared to discuss the website and its novel idea of bringing married people together in order to cheat on their spouses.

      The reaction from the audience was blood-curdling outrage. “How can you facilitate something so immoral?” they asked. “How can you stand to profit off adultery?” 

      Through the years, those kinds of questions seemed to plague the Canadian-based company—but that didn’t stop business from booming. With over 37 million paid user accounts and an estimated 124 million visits per month, there seemed to be no shortage of people who were interested in pursuing an extramarital affair from the comfort of their own home...

      ...that was...up until last month.    

      On July 15, 2015, hackers who identified themselves as the "Impact Team" contacted Avid Life Media, owner of Ashley Madison, to tell it that they had stolen confidential customer information including names, email addresses, home addresses, and embarrassing information related to user preferences and fantasies. If the website was not shut down, they promised to release this data to the general public. 

      On August 18, 2015, they made good on their promise.

      Since the data leak, a number of concerns have come to light. 

      Perhaps most obviously, there are concerns about online privacy and security. Even if you aren’t an Ashley Madison member, or had no inclinations of ever becoming one, chances are you were still disturbed by the way that such a massive volume of confidential client information was leaked to the general public. This incident dramatically illustrates how precarious our personal privacy really is in a digital age. The fact that the leak also appears to be morally motivated should also concern us.

      And then there are the effects of the breach, which could have far-reaching and long-lasting effects for countless individuals. While we can expect that marriages will be lost, the consequences of this breach will go even further for some. A number of public agencies have already launched investigations into whether their employees were accessing the website from work accounts—the results of which could end in termination for those who did. The possibility of losing their reputation, relationships and livelihood is too much for some to face, with at least two reported suicides linked to the leak so far. 

      This highlights one of the most horrible parts about the Ashley Madison leak—the people who were ‘caught’ in it were not only caught by their spouses, but also by millions of other people who had nothing to do with their choices or their relationships. As we pass judgment on these presumed personal breaches of trust, we must reflect upon the value that we, as a society, place on fidelity, monogamy, and the institution of marriage overall. 

      ...or not....

      After all, the fact remains—there were over 37 million Ashley Madison users at the time of the hack. That’s a lot of people—roughly the entire population of our country—and each of them represents another person who is in a relationship that is, for whatever reason, presumably not working the way that it ‘should’. This makes us wonder why so many marriages seem to be lacking and why so many men felt the need to look elsewhere to meet some secret desire, curiosity or need.

      And really, when we look at the data that’s what we’re seeing: men. The vast majority of Ashley Madison members were men—over 31 million members— leaving room for only 5.5 million profiles marked as ‘female’. And out of those profiles, it is difficult to say how many actually had a real, live woman sitting on the other end. Between the past lawsuits, where a former employee claimed damages for repetitive stress injuries incurred by creating thousands of fake female profiles, to the specific clause in its terms of service that indicates that ‘some’ profiles are on the site ‘for entertainment’, it seems to be an undisputed fact that many of the ‘females’ on Ashley Madison were less than human. 

      So what were Ashley Madison members really paying for? How many affairs were successfully orchestrated through the website? We may never know. But what we do know is that the men of Ashley Madison were, by and large, paying for a fantasy, not an affair, whether they knew it or not. 

      This, among other emerging details, calls the morality of the website into question for completely different reasons than what originally brought it under fire—and while it may be difficult to defend adultery in general, passing public, moral judgment on strangers’ marriages and sexual choices certainly seems less than fair.

      Comments

      2 Comments

      Fernando Ardenghi

      Sep 3, 2015 at 11:21pm

      I agree, the FBI should close AshleyMadison forever.

      geeknomad

      Sep 4, 2015 at 4:46pm

      Recent research indicates that about half the population (both males and females, in slightly unequal proportion) is biologically predisposed to infidelity (see article on "cads and dads" in The Economist). Statistics for REPORTED infidelity are only slightly less dismal (underreporting seems almost certain).

      Taken together, this data suggests the odds are LESS THAN ONE IN FOUR OR EVEN ONE IN FIVE (<25% or <20%) that YOUR relationship has two partners who are ALWAYS faithful.

      This is by no means a recent development. In history, fiction, mythology and media, infidelity is a durable and lasting theme, absolutely reliable and recurring over the entire span of human awareness.

      A mature, sophisticated technological society would sensibly admit that the expectation of fidelity is a sanctimonious artifact and put it to the side, with homophobia. Our society, not so much. The majority continues to cling to their Judeo-Christian delusions.

      This ugliness will continue until the facts win.