Ashley Madison – 100% discreet adventures (?)

Ashley Madison – Dating portal for discreet affairs in testing and comparison

Overall impression: [Rating:60/100]

Ashley Madison is an international dating portal specializing in anonymous adventures and discreet affairs. Its discretion makes it a name for itself in many countries. For more than ten years, the dating site has been advertising with the claim “Life is short. Have an affair.” and enjoyed a lot of media interest.

The portal has been very active in Europe for ten years now.

In September 2011, for example, Ashley Madison made headlines with a provocative poster on Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Horst Seehofer, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Clinton are pictured under the question “What do these three men have in common?” The affair portal gives the answer itself: “You should have used Ashley Madison better”.

From a legal perspective, such advertising with celebrities is probably at least in a gray area. However, this provocative form of advertising paid off for the cheating site: In addition to the people who became aware of the portal directly, the media in Germany also reported on it, which was welcome free advertising for the brand.

With 24 million (own figures) registered users worldwide since its founding and an Alexa rank of 3,382, Ashley Madison is the largest such internet exchange. However, as with many other providers, the number of active members is likely to be significantly lower. The ratio of male to female users is around 70:30 or 65:35.

The latest analyzes since the hack of the dating portal in the summer of 2015 and the publication of the data even point to an even more unfavorable gender ratio for the many registered men. That would significantly reduce the success rate of heterosexual men looking for an affair partner.

Who is this dating platform suitable for?

This site is not at all about finding your life partner. Quite the opposite, because only those who have already found their partner register here. Ashley Madison is about affairs .

The international dating portal is aimed at married people - women and men who are looking for like-minded people. Your connection is the affair. This is where you get to know each other when you looking for a forbidden adventure .

This portal is one of the largest and most popular in the world. According to the owner, a new member signs up every nine seconds. By the way, the owner's name is Bidermann. He is a married father and, according to his own statements, has always remained faithful to his wife.

How many like-minded people do you find?

Right on the homepage you get the option to see who might be a good match for you. In principle, that is everyone who is registered here, because all users of the network are looking for affairs.

If you click on this button, you will be asked to register first. In the background of the mask in which you can create a profile, you can see a list of possible partners for a fling or even an affair. Once you have registered, you can find the right partner using the search function.

You have the choice of looking for short or long affairs and also for a cyber adventure. Simply write your personal preferences in your profile and it will filter for partners who have similar wishes.

From our foray into this portal, our initial impression was that the majority of members are actually authentic and real people looking for discreet adventures. We couldn't find any obvious fakes. Based on published reports from active members, we were able to conclude that the chances of success for men and women are quite acceptable.

However, there is also negative feedback from former users who had no success whatsoever. We thought that this sometimes also depends a lot on your own approach and adherence to behavioral customs as well as decency and netiquette. Women in particular expect a certain level of sophistication and respect when it comes to affairs and sexual adventures.

There are also always former users who speak of rip-offs with this provider. We couldn't find any obvious evidence for this.

We now had to correct this impression when, as part of the hack of this dating platform, a number of data and information were leaked to the public that cast a rather negative light on the business principle of this dating platform.

The US journalist Annalee Newitz, for example, downloaded the entire data set for an analysis. It became clear that just looking at the ratio of user profiles reveals a clear imbalance.

In the database, over 31 million entries are marked as accounts for male users, while almost 5.5 million have a female identifier. The problem, however, is that only very few women's profiles were actually created and actively used by real users.

Numerous technical and user behavior-related indications point to this. (Source: gizmodo.com )

How does membership work?

As with most dating portal providers, you can register with Ashley Madison for free to get a risk-free first impression. Right from the start, potential candidates are shown based on their place of residence and their preferences.

The look and feel of this website stands out from some of its competitors. For example, the user can chat and view member profiles at the same time. This is very useful.

Many members have uploaded photos of themselves, but these are mostly not public and can only be viewed upon request. That makes sense, after all, this is about discretion and anonymity.

Sending emails and chat functions are reserved for paying members. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to find out whether you can receive emails or chat requests from other members as a free member.

Special features and functions

After registering, you can quickly and easily filter by age, distance to your place of residence and activity (online now, online in the last 24 or 48 hours, all) in a quick search . You will especially appreciate this search function if you prefer chat to an email message.

In the advanced search you can then filter by height, weight and sexual preferences as well as relationship status (tied or single).

Overall, the partner suggestions are presented very clearly. You can directly view the profile photo as well as all other important information such as age, place of residence and sexual preferences. There is also a button that shows you whether the person is currently online - practical and helpful if you want to invite this woman or man to a chat.

In addition to the numerous segmentation and filtering options for profiles and members, what particularly stands out is the provider's guarantee promise :

The so-called affair guarantee program states that participants can receive a refund of the amount paid if they do not find an affair within the first 3 months after purchasing the “affair guarantee package”.

To qualify for the program and reimbursement, you must:

• Compliance with the Ashley Madison Terms of Use
• Payment of the full amount for the “Affairs Guarantee” membership package, consisting of 1000 credits.
• Create a profile with a photo (public or private). Your profile and photo must be approved within the first 30 days of purchasing the Ashley Madison Affair Guarantee membership package. Details about releasing the profile and photos can be found in the provider's FAQ.
• Make sure your profile remains visible at all times for the first 3 months.
• Send “qualifying” VIP messages to at least 18 different members per month. Other means of communication, such as winks or emails outside of Ashley Madison, do not qualify.
• Send at least 5 Ashley gifts per month
• At least 60 minutes of chat with members per month
• Follow all steps of the Affair Guarantee Program

Detailed information and conditions can be found on the provider’s website under the “Guarantee” section.

Another special feature is the concept of “gifts”:

By sending so-called “gifts”, you as an advertiser can clearly stand out from other “competitors”. These are small virtual gifts such as a teddy bear, a rose or jewelry. You can purchase these virtual gifts directly using credits.

Security, data protection and privacy

As an absolute unique selling point, discretion and data protection are of course the highest priority for Ashley Madison. Your data is very secure at Ashley Madison and your personal data is not visible to other people.

When uploading your photos, you can set whether they are immediately visible to everyone, or whether you want to unlock them individually and upon request.

The provider undertakes to observe and comply with all statutory data protection regulations, in particular the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG) and the Telemedia Act (TMG). There is expressly no data trading with your private data. Data will only be passed on to third parties with the customer's consent or to fulfill contractual or legal obligations. The consent is recorded.

Account and credit card details are only transmitted via encrypted Internet connections (SSL). The website also received the “Trusted Security Award”.

These principles now seem to be paid mere lip service due to the gigantic hacker attack on the affair portal, from which millions upon millions of user data as well as parts of the site source code and the operators' internal emails are now exposed.

The effects are devastating for many of those affected. The operators of the portal have known for years that their site had security gaps, writes blogger Brian Krebs, who specializes in IT security. (Source: faz.net )

Free services:

• Registration
• Create profile
• upload photos
• Send free “winks”.
• Create and manage favorites
• Send replies to premium members
• Search function

Paid Services (included in Premium Membership):

• Online Chat
• Write personal email messages
• VIP messages
• Virtual gifts
• Exchange of private photos
• Preferred display in search results

TOP

• Free registration with basic functions
• More than 24 million members worldwide
• Consistent alignment with the target group
• User-friendly layout & design
• Clear search results
• Search function with filter options
• private photo galleries with access key
• Many payment methods (anonymous payment also possible)
• No subscription model

FLOP

• Gender ratio unbalanced
• relatively low chances of success for heterosexual men
• Portal has security holes
• A lot of user data was made public due to a hacker attack
• Data protection and privacy are only guaranteed on paper
• many female fake profiles
• questionable business practices
• relatively expensive, but usage-related

Costs and prices:

Ashley Madison uses a credits system instead of a subscription model. You can then use these credits to contact other singles. The cost of the credits depends on the amount you deposit. The prices for the credits are:

• 24.90 euros/100 credits when purchasing 1,000 credits (top package)
• 29.80 euros/100 credits when purchasing 500 credits (Elite package)
• 49.00 euros when purchasing 100 credits (introductory package)

It is therefore much more advantageous to buy at least 500 credits if you want to have more than just a quick taste of the platform. The credits are valid for an unlimited period of time. If you want unlimited mobile access using your cell phone, there is also a one-time activation fee of 19.99 euros.

You can use the credits to contact other members. The cost in credits is:

• 5 credits for the first communication to another person. All further email messages to the same member are then free of charge.
• 30 credits for a 30 minute chat session, 50 credits for a 60 minute chat session. Chatting at Ashley Madison is significantly more expensive than sending messages
• Virtual Gifts (Ashley Gifts) are available for 20, 30 and 50 credits.

Payment options:

• Credit card (MasterCard, VISA)
• Western Union
• check
• Paypal

Payment by credit card is processed discreetly. This means that your credit card statement will not show that you used it to purchase credits for Ashley Madison.

Contract and termination:

There is no subscription model with monthly recurring fees. However, the provider uses an auto-billing and auto-recharging feature on the member's account to keep that account active.

So, in the event that you take an action or require credit for functions you use and at the same time there are no credit left in your account or your account is in deficit, the operator will automatically (and after your consent) purchase the same package for you which you have previously purchased. You can cancel your authorization for this or change the payment method at any time.

Conclusion:

Anyone looking for discreet adventures should also be able to rely on discretion, the protection of their own data and privacy. However, recent circumstances have shown that these stated standards were not met, which ultimately led to the huge hacking attack.

Due to the published internal information, it is now very questionable whether this is a serious and trustworthy business model

Registering costs nothing. Everything on this dating portal is free for women. Not quite for men. You can buy credits. You can send messages and chat. This system is a bit unusual, but makes perfect sense.

Due to the high risk to privacy, registering with this portal cannot be recommended at the moment. Whether and to what extent Ashley Madison can recover and refocus from this scandal remains to be seen.