Warning! - This Site May Harm Your Relationship

Three years ago the adultery website Ashley Madison was hacked and 30 million people’s details were leaked. But what happened next? Kate Wills investigates…

- Kate Wills

When Laura Zampi,* now 27, signed up to Canadian dating site Ashley Madison four years ago, she did so for two reasons. One: she wanted to meet married men. Two: she didn’t want anyone to know about it.

Billing itself as “the world’s number one adultery website”, Ashley Madison met both Laura’s needs. Never far from the headlines, the site began life back in 2001, allowing married people the opportunity to set up dating profiles in order to have no-frills affairs with each other, or with single people like Laura. It was vilified by its detractors, who said it glorified adultery and encouraged extra-marital infidelity, but its users took a different stance. They chose to believe that rather than destroying marriages, what Ashley Madison did was keep many together, acknowledging as it did the great unspoken universal truth – that even in good marriages, sexual intimacy can wane. And when that happens, people will stray – physically and emotionally. Ashley Madison, then, was not a poison but a panacea for an age-old human problem. It knew – and accepted – that human beings are driven by desire as well as the need for emotional intimacy, and Ashley Madison could give the world both.