Ashley Madison insists that real women use its affair service
That Gizmodo investigation of leaked data suggesting that most of the women on Ashley Madison's affair-seeking service were fake? Completely bogus... if you ask Ashley Madison. It claims that there are plenty of real live women on the site -- the ratio of paying men to active women (who get to use it for free) is reportedly 1.2 to 1, and women sent 2.8 million messages just in the past week. Gizmodo made "incorrect assumptions" about what some of the data fields meant, Ashley Madison says. Whether or not that's true, you'll want to keep the data in context. The service isn't outlining the ratio of real to fake women, so it's not clear whether real women are bountiful or needles in the proverbial haystack.
Also, Ashley Madison is adamant that it's still growing despite the data breach. It says it racked up "hundreds of thousands" of new users this past week, including 87,596 women (see, they're real! Honest!). Of course, it's not certain how many of them are paying customers, or whether or not this rate will drop once the buzz surrounding the hack dies down. However, the stats do suggest that the breach was anything but a death knell for the online cheating hub.
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