STFU , Fitty Times :Graucho

The data release could have severe consequences for U.S. service members if found to be real. Several tech websites reported that more than 15,000 email addresses were government and military ones.

Adultery, under certain criteria including the misuse of government time and resources, is a crime in the U.S. armed forces and can lead to dishonorable discharge or imprisonment.

I'd be very surprised to see the government get involved in that way because it makes the military look bad, and verifying the accounts or when they were used etc would seem to be something outside their normal posture. However, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it were used to smear a high ranking individual, politician or anyone else with a meaningful degree of popularity or rank.

With regards to how this is possibly effecting surfer behavior this week during the mainstream media blitz....

We run sites and services in a lot of different adult sectors, so did a little math this morning and came up with the following:

1) Dating: We have run a "kinky dating" free site (kinkculture.com) for many years and the number of new signups per day is traditionally consistent. But, this week, new signups in the US are down by 30%, Canada dropped like a lead baloon, and a pretty steady flow of people deleting their accounts. Will be interested to see if things go back to normal after the media frenzy has died down. It's a totally free site (ad supported) that collects very little data beyond creating a nickname, adding their email address for match alerts, and then a lot of "what's your kink" info, so I'm guessing that a lot of folks are being gun shy at the moment.

2) Search: We also run a privacy-oriented adult search engine - boodigo.com - that does not mine or store any user data and provides users with an anonymous and encrypted search experience (and is heavily promoted this way in mainstream marketing). Boodigo also has very steady as a rock traffic, but within the first day of the AM data release news, traffic in the US and Canada went up by over 20%. I'm not sure if this is just some fluke, but suspect the AM news has some people now being more mindful in revealing that they are searching for "hardcore midget fartporn" lol

3) Paysites: No significant variation in traffic or conversions, although I a seeing a marked increase in privacy and TOS page views across the board for all of our paysites.

Time will of course tell what effects, big or small, this has on the overall adult industry, but I suspect the sector that is going to need some vigorous tap dancing will be dating.

That may well be one of the biggest lessons webmasters here can take away from this. But this has been a common thread among adult webmasters for as long as I can remember... cheapest host, cheapest registrar, cheapest writer, cheapest designer. I'd wager there are threads in the "looking to hire" section right now asking for cheap_____. I from day one looked at those who were successful online and went with their choices for the services I needed, and never once considered going cheap. And it payed off. Wheras going cheap can often come back to haunt you.

It's too bad that many won't learn from the Trashley Madison example at all.

One of the main points of concern there is the use of government emails for personal use to cruise and join sites like AM when they should be serving the people, and it's very likely going to bite a lot of elected officials in the ass.

Great post Colin :thumbsup

Best post so far in this discussion! Thanks Colin.

Would love to hear some numbers, even vague ones, from others to see if similar shifts are happening across many sites and networks right now.... Anyone else willing to share?

No credit card data was leaked, the database only has partial numbers.

Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 78187090
Filing Date November 20, 2002

You cannot Trademark a database but its contents are your legal property. Database contents are not published (usually in their entirety anyway) so copyright IDK -- it seems a reach ... but it could be ...

Sounds like messy legal biz.....

It was only transaction IDs thank god

Ah ok thanks for this. I heard CC info was released a la the Home Depot and Target situations.

Just wanted to also acknowledge your great post earlier. Thanks for digging into the numbers! While I don't have anywhere near the traffic you guys have your post (and this thread) did inspire me to look into my paysite numbers this week.

Sales are actually up a bit (odd being mid-August) while rebills seem steady. But when I checked traffic stats (popular pages) TOS and Privacy pages did indeed see a significant spike (35%).

I will keep an eye on the numbers as we move into the back-to-school and post-Labor Day season.

Unfortunately the media hype isn't likely to end anytime soon.

1. The hackers are dragging this out by releasing the data in dribs and drabs.
2. More customer names that are recognizable to the public are certain to emerge.
3. Sadly, at least a few of the thousands outed will quite possibly resort to suicide.

And the media will jump on any and all of this like flies on shit.

So It's fair to say that site owners should take a look at their Privacy and TOS pages to update them and it may even make sense to put a bold statement in about easy removal of data, free deletion of accounts etc on any kind of dating site offers.

As a shameless plug, it has also resulted in an uptick of people checking the validity of websitesecure.org trust seals (9% last I checked) on my own site, and I expect it has improved the value of the services we provide to sites that are certified.

The hackers are Russians. :2 cents:

Is that based on information or pure speculation?

>Does the release of the information affect your business?

Yes, I had customers asked to close the accounts: "My info had been hacked/compromised [no one specified Ashley Madison, but, you guess the timing...], please close my account. I am also canceling my credit card and getting a new one. I will then create a new account".

>Do you see any business opportunities as a result of the dump?

Nothing legal I can see...

>Will it be good or bad for the industry overall?

Bad. Since, I can't see a single reason why is good.

>Anything else you think is worth mentioning?

About the credit cards, the hackers said that they got that info not in Ashley Madison servers, but by logging in with user/password to the billers accounts (like, entering Epoch or CCbill), this is probably where the incomplete (partially masked) number would come from.

Except no more customers... even if they got savings, financially the company should be wiped out and possibly owners end in debt:

Ashley Madison Faces $578 Million Class-Action Lawsuit
http://www.inc.com/associated-press/...n-lawsuit.html

NO problem to find legal substance on damages... there's already extortion emails "pay with bitcon or we tell your wife" mails:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/08/...madison-users/

Some data: 28 million men versus 5 million women. just 14 percent of users on the site appeared to be women, "But ... repeatedly claimed Ashley Madison’s users were half men and half women in its key demographic":

Ashley Madison Hack Exposes (Wait for It) a Lousy Business | WIRED

But... " A former employee filed a lawsuit against the company claiming damages for wrist injuries caused while creating “1,000 fake female” profiles for the site’s launch in Brazil. ", so what's the real womens number?

I think the most stuff to come it will be christian, conservative activists, politicians names coming out. Here another christian evangelist:

Viral Christian Pregnancy YouTuber Sam Rader Had a Paid Ashley Madison Account

Would be nice to have someone from Ashley Madison post here. Some info on what they're are doing would be great. At least be somewhat accountable.

They give no updates in 5 days:

https://twitter.com/ashleymadison

They are now being sued for many millions of dollars via class action lawsuits and potentially face action from government agencies as well. I'd be shocked if they choose to make any statement at all until this gets resolved.

Yep. In light of all of the legal things popping up, they are well-advised to stay very quiet at this point with any sort of public statement that can and will be held against them in a court of law.

What a fucking mess.

Seeing AFF Canadian sign-ups taking the biggest hit. Numbers usually stay pretty consistent (based on over 15 years of heavy promotion). US numbers down but not as significantly as Canada. UK not affected at all at this point.
Still too early to be able to say that A M is the only reason for current drops.

Indeed. I do suspect that it being the final weeks of August comes into play here as well with so many folks taking summer vacations. Surprised your UK numbers are holding up as that and the rest EU countries pretty much take the month of August off and go to Spain where there is no internet! lol

Just a quick note of a real word impact:

A married couple I'm close friends with happens to be in a open relationship. However they don't tell their families about their love life. They both had accounts on Ashley Madison and used the site to meet other likeminded swingers.

Yesterday, the husband was contacted by an extended family member, who was very upset and wanted to let him know that his wife was using AM to cheat on him because he found her email address in the data dump. Now, my friend had to explain to him that they have an open relationship and will end up letting the rest of his family know that he and his wife like to swap with other couples so that they don't think his wife is cheating on him.

The whole thing is making a big mess out of people's live in all kinds of ways.

Oh that so sucks....

Educated speculation :2 cents:

Hollywood actor, NFL star and a top politician are among celebrities 'frantically calling up expensive damage limitation experts over the Ashley Madison hack'

Hollywood actor, NFL star and politician 'among celebrities on Ashley Madison' | Daily Mail Online

Forgiving wifes:



A suicide:
City Employee With Email Address Linked To Ashley Madison Committed Suicide | Blogs | San Antonio Current

Porn addiction admitted? :)

After the suicide news, some dark humor:

‘All Canadians’ Hit Ashley Madison With $578 Million Suit

No commentary other than this is getting very messy ...

It does not matter how much you spend on trying to secure your members details. If they can hack into the CIA, Military, security firms, Banks and other Gov agencys they sure as hell will get your members details if they really want them. One thing the internet is , is not safe and never will be.

I disagree, sure there is always some amount of uncertainty when doing anything online but good operational security usually works just fine in most circumstances. The hackers gave an interview in which they claim the password to access the root of all the servers and VPN's was simply Pass1234 to get thru BOTH layers...........then unencrypted member info. I mean come on, that is just plain terrible right? THey then just dumped all the info, it wasn't rocket science for them. AM did absolutely NOTHING about their security, they had none at all.

Should have paid with bitcoin.

they said they had their financial records too, now that I would like to see, if they are making as much as they say or it's really not all that profitable.

That will have to be discovered in the lawsuit if this claim survives the preliminary hearing.

I don't know and you don't know unless you have seen the data that was leaked.

I have not seen the data and never will even though it's everywhere but I didn't know if they released their financial stuff or not yet, if not I bet they will in the future to keep this alive even longer.

Wonder if any dating or dating related affiliate programs have quietly turned up the shave.

"It's all due to the AM hack! We're hurting too!"

If anything, an intelligent company would be adding affiliate sales to its best whales, hoping to prevent them from moving their traffic elsewhere. Shaving a few sales is a meaningless amount of money compared to preserving traffic from meaningful providers.

In the one sale every few months crowd shaving makes zero sense. Nobody making millions a year is sitting around thinking about ways to scam twenty bucks from a one sale affiliate. In fact, many companies don't want to deal with one sale affiliates at all anymore.

You sir are full of shit.

Want a clue? Check the AM processing before and after the hack -- same processor?

From what I have read to date in the media, customer credit card data was not compromised -- only truncated data xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-1234 by one account. The damages are only defamatory by the accounts cited ...

Not sure how this is playing in the media in other countries, but here in Canada whenever the news story is mentioned, the words "Canadian-based" are always used before Ashley Madison. Maybe Canadians are taking note of that.

Sure hope this blows over and everyone forgets about this whole incident soon. Seeing the lowest numbers on AFF these past 3 days that I have seen in quite some time. Sales were down almost 60% compared to historical stats. Please, please, please just be a statistical blip.

I didnt' mean the individual users financial stuff I meant company stuff, and I just read in a new article and they dumped all their financials now, how much he makes, his wife, all their ID's, ,passports, account numbers, cell phone numbers, daily revenue, affiliate info my god everything. 300k daily revenue. Wow the got just about everything.

As I mentioned at the start of this STFU News thread, trolling and nonsense will not be tolerated. You are welcome to say anyone is full of shit if you can present a valid counterpoint to what they have posted... just saying anyone is full of shit by itself does zero to advance the discussion. Please do better in your future replies or they will be deleted as previously explained.

As to Affiliate Payments, I would expect that Ashley Madison affiliates are about to get their outstanding payments wiped out entirely... I do not know that for a fact, but that is what I presume is about to happen. I don't think they will be 'shaving a few sales', I'd expect they are soon to be headed for bankruptcy protection and may be headed for having accounts frozen among a bunch of other legal obstacles. In other words, I don't think they will be able to pay their affiliates whether they want to or not, and I believe that affiliates are very low on their list of concerns at the moment.

On the other hand, I know for a fact that other sites in the dating space are very much more interested in retaining their traffic and their affiliates than they are in shaving anyone at the moment.

Avid Life Media sold a service to wipe people's details from Ashley Madison for a fee, which clearly did not happen, so where is the complicity of Avid Life in all of this ?

Noel Biderman desperately wants to shift the focus to the hackers, because his own culpability has to be downplayed if he is to survive this without jail time.


Two people may have committed suicide after Ashley Madison hack: police | SBS News

^What he said (except for the adding sales bit. Pretty sure that doesn't happen)^.

Affiliates like myself watch our stats religiously and anything that doesn't match our carefully tracked performance stats is quickly noticed. They know that many of us are just as sophisticated in our strategies and analysis as they are. Notice something peculiar or traffic isn't performing, and in my case I can change where my traffic goes with a single line of code.

Be rest assured, the large reputable companies aren't going to risk losing their top earners. That being said, there are some low life scum on this board that undoubtedly consider shaving to be an active part of their business strategy.

I would argue that one sale affiliates do have value as well. I would assume that they account for over 95% of the affiliates. (Programs like AFF have thousands of affiliates, but from past experience, I would say a handful of 50 or less account for the vast majority of the gross). And if you only make one sale, you are never going to reach the minimum payout, which means the program wouldn't have to payout anything on that single sale...no shaving required.

We are a relatively small AM affiliate, but what I've seen in the past week has blown me away. Paid sales are steady (but there's such a huge long-tail, I'm not putting a lot of credibility in those numbers), BUT free signups are up about 65%. Go figure....

Got a mail today, "in the wake of the AM leak", he wanted to know if his data is safe. So yes... clearly people are thinking about their previous purchases at adult-related sites...i'm sure it has some affect on future purchases....

Excellent thoughts....

To clarify:

I think many companies DO value one sale affiliates, however I do not think any would bother shaving one sale affiliates... it doesn't pay enough to be worth the time. While 95% of affiliates are of the one sale variety, 99% of sales do not come from them. There are much more profitable uses of their time and resources preserving the traffic from 99% of their sales than there are scamming traffic that generates less than 1% of their sales... and as you pointed out, the 99% of their sales come from professionals who understand net Earnings Per Click (EPC) - so 'shaving' would only serve to make that traffic go somewhere else.

One sale AM affiliates are likely to get shafted in the wake of this mess... and many probably STILL haven't changed their link codes to go somewhere else yet. Other reputable dating sites are brainstorming every idea they can to differentiate themselves from AM, to secure their own data, to preserve their own traffic sources, and to pick up the whales who used to send AM traffic but are now looking for new offers. They aren't wasting 30 seconds trying to create an elaborate scheme to shave a few bucks from a guy who is unlikely to ever reach the minimum payout threshold. :2 cents:

2 cents...

I agree they probably have not really considered affiliates at all as yet. I suspect they have ,as others have said, more pressing concerns.

As for shaving affiliates...in general....

to my knowledge the market is too competitive now to do that nowadays . Rule 1, never shave a whale, he will catch you, he has his own detailed stats and knows his traffic. (However even now , a big affiliate program will have 5-15% of its sales untracked. ie an unintentional shave. There are many ways this can happen despite the program trying to give an honest count)

takethebluepill...the reverse shave has been popular for years. Good affiliates are hard to get. Whales even rarer. You will do whatever you can to keep them happy so long as you can show a profit. However small, per join , spread per member lifetime relative to volume.

As for small affiliates, I used to manually credit people who were vocal on forums for example.

Specifically with AM... I think they have way too much on their plate to be looking at this hard yet.I have not seen the big 20-30g dump. But I would think in there is details of their affiliates perhaps if someone has seen this they would comment and remove the need for guessing?