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Ashley Maddison Added 4 Million Members Since Being Hacked

By Kanika Gupta | Update Date: Jan 07, 2016 10:39 AM EST

Nothing proves the phrase "no publicity is bad publicity", the way Ashley Madison scandal does. Ever since the big hack, the company has reportedly added 4 million new users. In the biggest ever data breach in which millions of adulterous spouses were exposed, the site's membership started to swell as opposed to being shut down. At the time of the hack, the company had around 39 million users and now the homepage shows that the website has 43 million members! Avid Life Media, parent company of Ashley Madison, declined to comment on the increased number, said PCMag.com.

When the big leak happened, as many as 15,000 members were registered under their official email addresses under .gov and .mil extensions. These are the official domains used by the American military and the government. Other institutions that took the fall because of the data breach were the premium institutes such as Yale, Harvard and important bodies including the UN and the Vatican. There were also some 70,000 phony profiles posing to be women so that the men could be lured into paying fees for credits on the website. The company refused to comment on the hack or the increasing numbers, revealed by CNN Money. CEO of Ashley Madison, Noel Biderman, stepped down from his post one week after the hack of the systems.

The hackers, Impact Group, threatened Avid Life Media for weeks before hacking into their systems. They demanded that the website be taken down. When Ashley Madison didn't give in to the blackmail, the hackers revealed the user information to show to them that the site that promises to secure the anonymity of the has 'failed you and lied to you'. 'We have explained the fraud, deceit and stupidity of ALM and their members,' the group wrote in a statement. 'Now everyone gets to see their data,' reports Daily Mail 

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