Type of site
|
Online dating service Social network service |
---|---|
Available in | Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Russian, Slovenian, Spanish (European, American), Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian |
Key people | Noel Biderman |
Parent | Ruby Corp. |
Slogan(s) | Find Your Moment (Since July 2016) Life is short. Have an affair. (Until July 2016) |
Website | AshleyMadison.com |
Alexa rank | 4,404 (Aug 2016[update]) |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Yes |
Users | 46 million (as of July 2016[update]) |
Launched | 2001 |
Current status | Active |
Ashley Madison, or The Ashley Madison Agency, is a Canadian online dating service and social networking service marketed to people who are married or in committed relationships. The Ashley Madison Agency is the world's largest online social networking community of its kind that caters to people who are already in relationships but still want to date.
It was founded in 2002 by Darren Morgenstern, with the slogan: "Life is short. Have an affair." The name comes from two popular female names, "Ashley" and "Madison".
The company received attention on July 15, 2015, after hackers stole all of its customer data—including emails, names, home addresses, sexual fantasies and credit card information—and threatened to post all the data online if Ashley Madison and fellow Avid Life Media site EstablishedMen.com were not permanently closed. By July 22, the first set of customer names were released by hackers, with all of the user data released on August 18, 2015. More data (including some of the CEO's emails) was released on August 20, 2015. The release included data from customers who had earlier paid a $19 fee to Ashley Madison to allegedly have their data deleted. The fee was also applied to people who had accounts set up against their will, as a workplace prank, or because of a mistyped email address.
On August 28, 2015, Noel Biderman agreed to step down as chief executive officer of Avid Life Media Inc. A statement released by the firm said his departure was "in the best interest of the company".
In July 2016, the parent company Avid Life Media re-branded itself to Ruby Corp. and appointed Rob Segal as the new CEO. In the same month the company dropped its signature tagline “Life is Short. Have an Affair.” to "Find your moment" and updated its brand imagery to replace the image of a woman wearing a wedding ring with a red gem-shaped symbol as its logo.