Business model[SIZE=small]
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Unlike
Match.com or
eHarmony, Ashley Madison's business model is based on credits rather than monthly subscriptions. For a conversation between two members, one of the members—almost always the man—must pay five credits to initiate the conversation. Any follow-up messages between the two members are free after the communication has been initiated. Ashley Madison also has a real-time chat feature that is metered. Credits are utilised to pay for a certain time allotment of chat. Women can send messages to men for free, but the men must pay to read them.
[18]
Several aspects of Ashley Madison are described in the Terms and Conditions as "For Your Entertainment."
[19] This included Ashley's Angels, a feature that generated fictitious profiles to simulate communication with real members and perform market research. According to the site, Ashley's Angels accounts "are NOT conspicuously identified as such."
[20] Ashley's Angels profiles were limited to messaging only guest accounts and users could opt out of the feature via their profile management page. Users were charged the standard rate to read messages from and chat with these fictitious profiles.
The site allows users to hide their account profiles for free. Users looking to delete their accounts, even those made without the individual's consent, have to pay a $19 fee.
[19][10]The full delete option claimed to remove user profiles, all messages sent and received, site usage history, personally identifiable information, and photos from the site.
[21] The data disclosures in 2015 disclosed that this "permanent deletion" feature did not delete anything, and all data was recoverable.
Imbalance between male and female users[SIZE=small]
[edit][/SIZE]70% of Ashley Madison's users are male.
[22] "More men than women use the service, with the disparity increasing as they advance in age", and "Men seek sex, while women seek passion".
[23] This is not revealed to prospective users. Furthermore, Ashley Madison routinely uses computer-generated female "profiles" to make it seem that more women participate than really do.
[22]
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wut?
Honestly, I never signed up or even heard of it until recently as part of the AM stuff. My wife saw the email 
but at least the info was really old and outdated, from a place we haven't lived in years. But then, curious, I opened up one of the emails which stated "we see you're in a happy relationship, so we'll respect that". 
![[icon]](/data/avatars/s/5/5167.jpg?1660313464){kind=avatar}
