Ashley Madison‘s Chief Strategy Officer Paul Keable tells In Touch exclusively that the cheating website’s “pay to delete” feature for users who no longer wanted to be part of the site was a “mistake.”
“Yeah, so, great idea, great concept. The intention was pure, unintentional mistakes led to what clearly happened. But to categorize it as anything other than an unintentional mistake would be very wrong. And untruthful,” he explains.
In the new three-part Netflix documentary, Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal, several users were seen paying a $19 fee to delete their profile from the website when they no longer wanted to use its services.
After the site was hacked in 2015, users’ profiles were released in a massive data dump, including those who previously paid to have theirs deleted. It was later revealed that Ashley Madison made $2 million in fees collected from users wanting to delete their accounts, even though the company failed to do so.
Ashley Madison launched in 2001 as a dating site for people seeking adulterous affairs. It began with the catchphrase “When monogamy becomes monotony,” but garnered millions of users when it changed the hook line to “Life is short. Have an affair.
One person seen in the documentary being drawn in to Ashley Madison was Sam Rader, a married father who was working an overnight shift as an emergency room nurse in Texas.
Sam, 38, signed up using his actual personal information after feeling his life had become boring and routine. He later decided to quit the service after his marriage to wife Nia Rader heated up once they became YouTube stars, with fans following their everyday routines from shopping to raising their kids. Sam even secretly sneaked a sample of Nia’s urine to reveal to her that they were expecting baby No. 3 in a touching YouTube video.
Their marriage faced a huge crisis when Sam’s name and information was among the millions included in the 2015 data release, even though he had paid to have his account deleted. His wife was devastated, although Sam and Nia were ultimately able to save their marriage.
To this day it hasn’t been determined who was behind the Ashley Madison data hack. In July 2015, a group or user called themselves “The Impact Team” and gave executives 30 days to take down the site with the threat of releasing all customer information if they didn’t.
The company hired several IT security and forensics experts to try to find the culprit before the 30 days were up, but it was to no avail. On August 18, 2015, The Impact Team released the first drop of client information on the dark web, followed by an even bigger data release on August 20. No arrests have ever been made in the case.
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