Ashley Madison: Legalized Extramarital Affair Enablers?

With the recent hack that released private details of its clients who are guaranteed confidentiality, is the online dating site Ashley Madison nothing more than an antisocial extramarital affair enabling site?

By: Ringo Bones 

From The Simpsons and various late night show hosts / comedians, Ashley Madison has become a punch-line of legalized extramarital affair jokes for most of the 21^st Century.  And even though some site on the “dark web” are providing more nefarious services like murder-for-hire or guaranteed online sale and delivery to online customers of unlicensed modern assault rifles and hard illegal drugs like heroin and cocaine, it seems that the social networking and online dating website Ashley Madison has been dealt the short end of the “right-wing conservative morality stick” when it comes to tearing the social fabric. Unfortunately, a recent high-profile hacking attack had got the private details of their clients divulged online and thus made Ashley Madison gain “unwanted” popularity. 

Ashley Madison is a Canada based online dating service and online networking site whose services are aimed at people who are married or who are in a committed relationship who wants to cheat and get away with it from their current partner who they no longer love and yet don’t have the will to break-up with. As typified by the service’s slogan: “Life is short, have an affair”, Ashley Madison is often seen by the general public as nothing more than an extramarital affair enabling website. Ashley Madison was launched back in 2001 and the name of the site was derived from the two most popular female names used on the North American continent – “Ashley” and “Madison” – as opposed to the popular belief after “Dolley Madison” - former US President James Madison’s wife with a penchant for having extramarital affairs. 

Ashley Madison received its most recent significant “unwanted public attention” back in July 15, 2015 after a high-profile online hacking attack allowed “ethical hackers” to steal all of its private customer data – including names, home addresses, credit card information and even including their client’s “most private sexual fantasies” – and threatened to post all the data online if Ashley Madison and fellow Avid Life Media site EstablishedMen.com were not permanently closed. 

At present, Ashley Madison is now facing a 576-million US dollar class-action lawsuit from its “singed” clients. One of the high-profile individuals who were affected by the hacking attack was American Traditional marriage advocate and alleged child molester Josh Duggar who was recently outed by the “ethical hackers” as one of Ashley Madison’s top clientele. Given the “amorality” of Ashley Madison and the “ethical hackers” who outed their clients seeking to get away with their secret trysts, I bet this story won’t be having a happy ending.