Thursday, October 1, 2015

The scam that is Ashley Madison

The Daily Mail (UK) showed further proof that Ashley Madison is nothing more than an online scam as well as a lesson to Nigerians in how to scam the internet. The newspaper reported:

A data scientist has uncovered what he says is proof that Ashley Madison created tens of thousands of fake accounts to dupe members into paying for its services, in a scheme that would have almost doubled the website's revenue.

According to statistics seen by Daily Mail Online, 40,000 profiles were set up on the affair site using just six email addresses owned by the website's operators on two separate days.

It follows claims in previous reports that the extra-marital dating network tried to hide around 100,000 of these so-called 'engager' profiles – sometimes referred to as Ashley Angels - from users, so they believed they were talking to real people.

If true, this means the real number of 'available' women was drastically reduced, while the website's monthly revenue was almost doubled by the 'engagers', as members have to pay to read their online messages....

Jeremy Bullock, the chief data scientist at a UK-based technology firm, said he was suspicious of Ashley Madison’s recruitment methods, so searched through the data released by hackers last month looking for anomalies.

He found that on April 10, 2012, 122,766 ‘men’ and 11,923 ‘women’ signed up to the website from an IP address that traced back to Avid Life Media - Ashley Madison’s parent company.

On February 2, 2013, a further 100,092 'women’ also signed up.

Looking closely at the data, he found only six email addresses had been used to generate a total of around 40,000 'fake' women. One of these was host@almlabs – another IP address owned by Avid Life Media.

He told Daily Mail Online: ‘Looking at the IP addresses used by these emails, the majority were from localhost.

‘The next largest were from IP address 38.113.163.225 – which has a host name of tor.office.avidlifemedia.com.'

He added: ‘I believe that this data shows that despite Ashley Madison’s protestations to the contrary, member generation was going on at a industrial scale and that there is a clear trail of evidence leading back to the company.’

Although Bullock says he found 40,000 'bots', other media reports suggest the number could be closer to 100,000.

As a result of the supposed scheme, according to Gizmodo, around 80 per cent of new members were sent messages by 'engagers' - fake profiles - when they signed up.  Rest of article.

Here come the lawsuits.





11 comments:

PittPanther said...

AM must be hoping that the guys are either took ashamed at their own gullibility, or took scared that their spouse would find out, to start lawsuits.

Anonymous said...

So, all those beautiful-yet-available young women, with the perky-yet-somehow-similar names, were FAKES? Who'd have guessed?

Anonymous said...

When I first heard of the AM debacle, I thought it was an online clothing retailer. Damn, I'm out of touch.

Anonymous said...

If I read correctly that AM previously took substantial steps to ho public, this would seem ripe for a criminal securities investigation. Correct?

Anonymous said...

suckers looking for suckers got suckered.

Anonymous said...

3:35. Excellent phraseing!

Anonymous said...

Pitt: Is your keyboard stuck on 'took'?

Observes Human Nature... said...

The hoopla over the airing of Ashley Madison had nothing to do with its legitimacy or whether it was a scam. It was and still IS all about exposing the list of people who paid money to hook up with a person to whom they were not married.

With the exception of a few who protested somebody had stolen their identity and their favorite pair of golf shoes, the list still exists, the infidelity (or attempts there-at) still exists and the betrayal of vows still exists. Everybody is hoping, in their particular case, the heat has subsided and they can relax and be more careful next time.

Find The Pancakes... said...

Any reliable word on suicides, divorces or beatings (in the Metro) as a result of the expose'?

PittPanther said...

No keyboard, I don't own a computer. I use a tablet with "autocorrect". That's the root of my spelling problems. I try to proofread but some errors still get through.

Find The Popcorn said...

PittPanther; NEWSFLASH: A tablet is a computer. So is your Texas Instrument thing with the red readout, and the things behind your dashboard and your cell phone.



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