Cheating Capital? Columbus leads nation in sign-ups for Ashley Madison adultery website
Columbus leads the nation in one unusual metric: the amount of summer sign-ups to adultery website Ashley Madison.
The city had the highest per capita sign-ups to the online dating service for married people seeking affairs from June 20, 2023 to September 22, 2023, according to a Monday press release from the company.
Paul Keable, the company's chief strategy officer, said that Columbus' presence on the list stood out and showed the "ubiquity of infidelity".
"(Infidelity) ranges in every type of city, from tourist destination to major metropolis to suburban located areas," he said.
The city has not appeared in previous rankings released by the company, he said.
More about adultery website Ashley Madison
The Toronto-based company—whose tagline is "Life is short. Have an affair"— has been around since 2002, but it first gained broader international attention when hackers stole and released personal information for around 37 million of the site's users in 2015, Reuters reported.
The site's parent company, Ruby Corp.—previously known as Avid Life Media Inc. before the company rebranded after the breach—settled with the millions of users who had their data exposed for $11.2 million in 2017.
The company also settled with the Federal Trade Commission and a number of states in 2016 after the site was accused of making false promises of security and using female bot accounts to entice men into paying for the service. The site was required to adopt a comprehensive data security program and pay $1.6 million in that case.
Today, the site has around 85 million users and a male-to-female user ratio of 1 man for every 0.7 women, Keable said.
The data breach and the company's business practices are the focus of a new Netflix documentary series, "Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal".
@NathanRHart
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ashley Madison: Columbus is #1 in summer sign-ups for adultery website
