Ashley Madison users hit with 'date bait'? Hacked data suggests cheating website faked female profiles to lure men in

Cheating network Ashley Madison allegedly allowed fake profiles to proliferate on the site, as massive data leaked by hackers last week also cast suspicion on the company’s claims that it has a sizeable base of female users.

According to user records laid bare by hackers last week, of the more than 35 million records released, only 5 million – a mere 15 per cent – actually belonged to women. This runs counter to Ashley Madison’s long-triumphant claims that it is one of the few dating sites that really clicks with women, with CEO Noah Biderman previously boasting it enjoys an overall 70-30 gender split and 1:1 male-female ratio among the under-30 age bracket.

This discrepancy may be the smoking gun that proves what angry users, industry insiders and government watchdogs have alleged for some time: that when it comes to reporting their own user numbers, paid-dating sites distort, manipulate and sometimes straight-up lie.

“Ashley Madison has paid people to write profiles, and they’ve allowed fake profiles to proliferate on their site,” said David Evans, an industry consultant who has contracted with Ashley Madison in the past and has tracked the business of online dating since 2002. “Tons of sites are guilty of that.”

This is news to legions of paying online daters who have treated tales of “date bait” as message-board myth and not as a tangible, industry-wide practice.

This may also sharpen anger among the site’s paid users – some of whom are “living in fear” after their personal data, among 37 million Ashley Madison accounts, were leaked online by hackers who are demanding that the site – whose tagline is “life is short, have an affair” – be shut down.