20 Shocking Reveals From ‘The Ashley Madison Affair’ Docu-Series on Hulu

Ashley Madison’s Name Inspo

Ever wonder how the cheating website was named? Well, according to the docu-series, the name Ashley Madison was chosen with the intention of making the site very female friendly in hopes of enticing women to join. So who’s Ashley Madison? It’s a mashup of two “very popular baby girl names in 2002,” Ashley and Madison. Yuck!

Ashley Madison’s Astounding, Deeply Concerning Growth

Throughout The Ashley Madison Affair viewers see sporadic updates on the site’s growth, starting in January 2002, when Ashley Madison claimed 60,000 members and jumping to August 2002, when it claimed a whopping 550,000 members. The final tally of the series comes in 2021, more than five years after the hack, when Ashley Madison was still drawing new users despite the data breach. The dating site claimed 4 million new members in 2021, bringing the site to a global total of 75 million.

Only Men Paid To Use The Site

In case you had any doubts, Ashley Madison’s trusty business model was “a credit-based system where men come on [and] purchase a set amount of credits to send messages to women.” Women seeking men weren’t charged for the site, because they were such precious users and Ashley Madison wanted to encourage as many women as possible to join to avoid a site full of, well, only men.

Dick Pics Galore

There was a lot to fear during Ashley Madison’s massive data breach, but one thing men had to worry about were private nudes leaking, because apparently a lot of men used dick pics as their profile photos. Ugh.

Twists No One Saw Coming

The Ashley Madison Affair is peppered with firsthand accounts of users and spouses of users, but two twists in particular left me yelping at my screen. After one woman in the docu-series learned her husband had been having an Ashley Madison affair of his own, she asked him for his username and password, checked out his profile, and learned the woman he’d been cheating with was also married with three kids. She kicked him out of the house, tore up his favorite Seahawks jersey, sold her wedding rings, hired a divorce attorney, and moved out a month later with her five-year-old daughter. Her husband told her he wasn’t in love with woman he met on the site and would never talk to her again. But they’ve… been together for almost 10 years. GASP!

Then one man who spoke revealed he joined Ashley Madison because he was a journalist reporting on why women cheat. He’d been married for 12 years, but the site, the experimental dates he went on, and revisiting of his experience post-hack ultimately cost him his marriage.

Ashley Madison’s CEO Noel Biderman, “One Of The Most Hated Men On The Internet,” Took Advantage Of Any Press Opportunities And “Had A Lot Of Enemies”

Noel Biderman was on The View, talked to Tyra Banks, debated Sean Hannity (who asked him where his soul was!) and took advantage of any press he could, because even if the interviews were negative, he knew he was drawing attention to Ashley Madison. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Yuck!

The Eliot Spitzer Ad

In 2008, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer — a man who ran on a platform of strong family values — publicly apologized for cheating on his wife and paying women to have sex with him. In response, Ashley Madison took out full page add in The New York Post and said, “We hate to say we told you so, but you should have used Ashley Madison.”

Noel Biderman’s Confusing Personal Life

Food columnist Corey Mintz had the CEO and his wife over to dinner at his house, and the docu-series not only revealed that they showed up with another woman (who brought a cooler full of truffles), but it played audio clips of the interview from that night.

“Well we, I’m hoping, still centralize our marriage around monogamy,” Biderman said of him and his wife. “That’s the expectation we have of one another and I don’t even know if it’s the right expectation, and I certainly don’t believe it’s necessarily the healthiest thing anymore for people. I think it causes strain. I think the data’s pretty evident that couples who remove that strain of monogamy, they just don’t seek out divorce nearly as often as couples who cling to monogamy.”

Over the years, Biderman’s wife, Amanda, started getting more involved in and becoming a face of the company, all while sending the mixed message that she, uh, wasn’t a fan of cheating. OK, girl!

Filippo Marchino And The AshleyMadisonSucks.com War

Despite making the site free for women the ratio of male to female users was thrown way off as the site grew, and it wasn’t long before people began complaining about their experience on Ashley Madison. And where did they complain? On a new site called AshleyMadisonSucks.com. Consumer Rights Attorney Filippo Marchino told cameras that the owner of the rival site began receiving attacks. Someone emailed him pretending to be his girlfriend, then emailed his girlfriend pretending to be him. So Marchino decided to get involved and stand up for them. As a result, he says threats were made against him and his family, he was called offensive names, and he and his ex-wife had to move out of their house for a period of time because they were scared someone was going to hurt them or their dogs.

Eventually Ashley Madison started a trademark infringement claim against AshleyMadisonSucks.com. Then, after proving it was legal to have a complaint website, Biderman called the site’s owner with threats, saying, “Give me the URL back. It’s my domain. Or I’m gonna make life miserable for you.” Biderman offered $10,000 for the site, but the owner of Ashley Madison Sucks recorded the call and considered using it to take Biderman down. Instead, Biderman’s threats worked and the owner pulled back. The 2015 data leak revealed the complaint site had been sold to Ashley Madison, and in a “brilliant and unethical as hell” move, Biderman bought the domain and expanded the site with positive testimonials.

Ashley Madison Goes International

By 2009, Ashley Madison planned to expand internationally. With 2.7 million users in Canada, the U.S., and Ireland, the company attempted to scale to Tokyo, Japan, and within eight months they gained a million subscribers. Next up? Seoul, South Korea, where infidelity was illegal. In first week they had 40,000 people join, and in two weeks South Korea shut down the site. In response, Ashley Madison sued the South Korean government for anti-business practices and within a few months the site was back up and the law was repealed.

The Tiger Woods Offer

Remember when the Tiger Woods cheating scandal came out in 2010? Ashley Madison used that to its advantage as well by making the athlete a $5 million offer to be the face of the brand and even holding a “mistress” competition. According to the docu-series Ashley Madison’s “brilliant, parasitic advertising” was rooted in the idea that celebrities didn’t even need to engage with the company, the media would cover either way.

The Day Everything Changed

On July 12, 2015 members of the Ashley Madison team went to the office for a normal day of work, opened their laptops, and saw the following message:

“We are the Impact Team. We have taken over all systems in your entire office. All customer … databases … financial records, emails. Shutting down Ashley Madison will cost you but non-compliance will cost you more. We will release all customer secret sexual fantasies, nude pictures, real names and addresses. Avid Life Media will be liable for fraud and extreme harm to millions of users.”

There was no ransom demand, but Ashely Madison was given 30 days to shut down the site…or else.

Looping in Cyber Security Journalist Brian Krebs

The individual or individuals who sent the threat communicated with a single journalist over the course of those 30 days: Cyber Security Reporter Brian Krebs, who worked at The Washington Post for 14 years before launching krebsonsecurity.com. On July 19, 2016, a week after the Impact Team’s ultimatum, Krebs received notice of breach and files with personal info of a few dozen people, along with a spreadsheet of every Ashley Madison employee’s cell phone number and email address. He decided to phone CEO Noel Biderman and put up a story an hour later that sparked wider media coverage. To this day, Krebs says it’s the biggest scoop he’s ever had.

Full Delete Didn’t Save The Day

The docu-series revealed that Ashley Madison had a feature called Full Delete, in which a user could pay $19.99 to “remove all traces” of their usage from the site. They were making “$1.7 million a year or something” from that single feature, but even after Full Delete, servers still kept identifying info, and the Impact Team confirmed that user purchase details were not scrubbed.

The Hack Exposed 32 Million Users, Including High-Profile Names Like Josh Duggar

On August 18, after the demand was not met, the Impact Team followed through on the threat and released Ashley Madison’s data online in a torrent file. Among the high profile victims of the hack was convicted sex offender Josh Duggar, who, per Gawker, paid almost $1,000 to maintain two Ashley Madison accounts under the handles joshtheman and readyforthisdc. Y-U-C-K!

The Second Data Dump

On August 29, 11 days after the hack, the Impact Team sent Biderman another message that read, “Hey Noel, you can admit it’s real now.” It was accompanied by a dump of his emails from Avid Life Media, which revealed all of his own secrets, business strategy, and more. Among the CEO’s emails were close to 300 messages between him and a woman who suggested the two were meeting up regularly at a hotel for dates. One email also showed Biderman’s interested in 18 and 19-year-olds.

An Army Of Bots

Speaking of that email dump, the docu-series also drew attention to the Ashley Madison fake profile lawsuit, which was filed two years before the hack in 2013. After the second dump, Biderman’s emails confirmed that over 10,000 fake profiles were created in under two weeks and even included an Ashley Madison video instructing employees on how to make fake profiles. Turns out the site launched 22,000 fembots during 2013.

Who Was Behind The Hack?

Several days after acknowledging the breach, Ashley Madison offered a $500,000 bounty for the hacker’s identity. They initially considered a former employee who was suspected of leaking company secrets, but that man died by suicide in 2014, more than a year before the hack. Though it’s possible he was working with others or gave them his access, the case remains open and ongoing with no known suspects.

The Fallout…And The Recovery

In July 2016, the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into Ashley Madison’s practices and the company had to pay $1.6 million in settlements for deception, misleading users, and lax online security.

Then in December 2016, a Class Action Lawsuit was filed against Ashley Madison. After ruling users couldn’t sue anonymously, the pool dropped from 42 to 18 plaintiffs, and though they won the case and got an 11.2 million settlement, the 18 people had to split that sum amongst themselves, the class of 2,500 victims they represented, and the lawyers involved.

You’d think a hack this massive would kill a company that built itself up on the promise of privacy, but Ashley Madison lives on. In 2017, the site commissioned a report to verify there were no bots in the system and achieved a ratio of one male for every 1.13 females. As noted, the final growth tally in the series was more than five years after the hack, when Ashley Madison claimed 4 million new members in 2021, bringing the site to a global total of 75 million.

What Happened To Biderman?

Biderman stepped down as CEO of Ashley Madison 13 days after the hack and “vanished off the face of the earth,” according to a docu-series source. “I do know that he still works, I’ve seen him on LinkedIn, but beyond that no idea what he’s up to.” Apparently, he still resides in Canada and lists his occupation as entrepreneur, but hasn’t been in public eye since. Per the series, Biderman’s wife stood by him through it all, and he “seclined to comment on his tenure at Ashley Madison,” but according to his lawyer, he “is — and was — a committed husband and father.”