TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — New accounts on Ashley Madison, a site marketed to those seeking affairs, rose by 35 percent in Taiwan during the pandemic last year.
In the midst of the global pandemic, new accounts on Ashley Madison soared in Taiwan in 2020. According to the company's most recent membership report, Taiwan's average monthly registrations in 2020 grew by 35 percent compared to 2019, and the country ranks No.1 in Asia for signups.
Taiwan is also one of the countries with a higher female-to-male ratio, with 1.1 active women for every active paid male member. The top three Taiwanese cities for signups are Taipei, Hsinchu, and Taichung.
Cities with most signups in Taiwan. (Ashley Madison image)
Following the grand justice’s decision to strike down the law prohibiting adultery in May of 2020, new accounts on Ashley Madison grew significantly, especially among women, with the website seeing a more than 600-percent rise in the daily average for new female users.
The website claims that this "shift in cultural attitudes clearly indicates Taiwan’s acceptance of a modern view toward monogamy," and believes it represents an opportunity for the company to invest further in the Taiwan market. Ashley Madison predicts that it will see more than 1 million new members in Taiwan by the end of 2022.
“We’ve seen a tremendous response from our Taiwanese membership this year, which I believe is reflective of the progressive direction the country is heading in,” remarked Paul Keable, Chief Strategy Officer at Ashley Madison. “The surge in new members from Taiwan is not only indicative of changing attitudes toward monogamy, but more interestingly, they point to an increased desire for freedom of choice, especially amongst women who are actually initiating affairs slightly more often than their male counterparts,” he added.
Despite the global COVID-19 pandemic and widespread lockdowns, the dating site claims that interest and participation in infidelity in Taiwan and around the world increased last year, resulting in a global uptick in new members.
In its Love Beyond Lockdown report, the company found that its members often seek support from someone other than their spouse while under stress and that "Their marriages benefited from that." The dating site claimed that 92 percent of members reported very little to no interest in divorce, while 84 percent deem their infidelity a valuable form of "self-care."
In 2015, a group of hackers leaked over 60 gigabytes of data from the website, including user details. Internet vigilantes plotted to use the data to publicly humiliate famous individuals, while extortionists attempted to scam individuals whose data was revealed. In February of 2020, a new extortion campaign was targeted at victims of the 2015 data breach, threatening to expose their Ashley Madison profiles unless they pay US$1,000 in ransom within six days.
When asked to respond to security concerns, Keable stated last June that the company has invested millions of dollars in rebuilding its security functions. He said that he cannot discuss many of the changes to prevent "bad actors" from gaining insight into their new security protocols, but some features are evident to members, such as two-factor verification.
In the event that a person is hit by an extortion scam, Trend Micro advises victims not to pay the ransom because the data has already been leaked onto the internet and cannot be completely removed. It stated that if a victim pays the fee, it will only embolden the criminals to target more people in the future.
