Executives at Ashley Madison may have lost their founder and CEO after suffering a breach that leaked highly personal details for more than 30 million users, but they want to make one thing clear: business fundamentals are strong, and the service for people seeking discreet encounters won't go gentle into that good night.
"Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated," the remaining executives wrote in a statement issued early Monday morning. "The company continues its day-to-day operations even as it deals with the theft of its private data by criminal hackers. Despite having our business and customers attacked, we are growing." The statement went on to say that the company acquired "hundreds of thousands of new users"—including 87,596 women—although Ars has no way of confirming any of the numbers provided.
Monday's statement also challenged media reports claiming that an infinitesimal percentage of Ashley Madison users were real women and that the rest were either men or bogus female accounts manufactured by Ashley Madison employees in an attempt to lure men. Women sent in excess of 2.8 million messages on the Ashley Madison platform last week alone, company executives said, even as the company provided no details on how many messages were sent from male accounts and made no assurances that the female messages weren't generated by automated scripts.
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