Ashley Madison admits using fembots to lure men into spending money

The hookup site for cheaters admits its mistakes and tries to rebrand.

Oh no! You discovered my secret!

Bionic Woman

After nearly a year of radio silence, the infidelity hookup site Ashley Madison has finally released a statement about what's next for the company. Among other things, the company's new executive team admits that it used fembots to lure men into paying to join the site, which promised the men discreet affairs with willing women.
In fall 2015, Ashley Madison made headlines when a hacker or hackers known as Impact Team released massive data dumps from the company's source code, member databases, and then-CEO Noel Biderman's e-mail. The member database contained the names of 34 thousand people trying to have extra-marital affairs, and the revelations induced at least one man to commit suicide. In the wake of the data breach, a number of people have filed lawsuits against the company, and the company is currently under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission.

Last year, as part of an investigation into the data dump, I published a series of articles at Gizmodo exposing how the company used female chatbots called "hosts" or "engagers" to trick men into paying for Ashley Madison's services. The scam was simple: when a man signed up for a free account, he almost immediately got a chat or private message from a "woman" whose profile showed a few sexy pictures. To reply to his new lady friend, the man had to pay for an account. In reality, that lady was a few lines of PHP code.

In internal e-mails, company executives shared documents that showed more than three-quarters of all paying customers had been converted by a fembot, referred to as a "host." There were more than 70 thousand of these fembot accounts, created in dozens of languages by data entry workers. The workers were told to populate these accounts with fake information and real photos posted by women who had shut down their accounts on Ashley Madison or other properties owned by Ashley Madison's parent company, Avid Life Media.

Enlarge / This slide is part of a report on Ashley Madison "hosts," or fembots, leaked from internal company e-mails last year. It shows that more than three-quarters of the men on Ashley Madison were converted to paying customers after talking to a fake woman.

Also in internal company e-mails, executives discussed openly that only about five percent of the site's members were real females.
Since these revelations, Ashley Madison has remained a going concern that posts regularly on its site about how its membership is growing. CEO Noel Biderman stepped down, and earlier this week his successors—CEO Rob Segal and President James Millership—finally opened up to the public about where the company is going. Millership admitted that the company used fembots and swore not to use them again: "My understanding is that bots are widespread in the industry, but they are no longer being used, and will not be used, at Avid Life Media and Ashley Madison." Segal claimed in an interview with The New York Times that the site now has roughly 16 percent real female members, which would be a considerable jump from what executives estimated privately last year. He provided no evidence to back up this claim.

Segal and Millership also said they have tightened up their security by "investing heavily in technology" and by offering members "new, discreet" systems of payment. In addition, Ashley Madison will be "rebranding." No longer is the site just for people who want to cheat on their spouses. Now it's "the world’s most open-minded dating community," aimed at people who are "single, attached, looking to explore, or just curious."

What could go wrong? After all, Ashley Madison's new members are going to be protected by what the company calls in a statement "security enhancements and privacy safeguards to deal with evolving cyber threats." Sounds perfect for people who are looking to explore.