Ashley Madison leak reveals Cambridge as the UK's cheating capital

After 1.3 million Brits' data was leaked from extramarital affair website Ashley Madison

(Oli Scarff/Getty images)

Cambridge, a city normally associated with exceptional education and punting, has been handed the rather dubious crown of being the capital of cheating.

The claims follows the apparent hacking of the personal details of up to 33 million users from the Ashley Madison adultery site.

The leaked data reveals that the university city has the highest concentration of users of the website in the UK, according to the Sunday Times.

The dating website for those already in relationships recorded 5,094 members from Cambridge, which has a population of 123,900.

This equates to roughly one in every 20 adults in the city being on the site. An overwhelming majority (90%) of the Cambridge-registered users were male.

The Ashley Madison website claims around 1 in 7 of its users are female (AFP)

This is not the first time Cambridge has topped the list when it comes to sex. A 2012 survey named the city as the most “sexually liberal” place in the UK.

In that study, one fifth of those surveyed said they would consider cheating on their partners. The data also revealed Cambridge residents had a third more sex than the average Briton.

The second and third placed cities for affairs, according to the Ashley Madison user data, were Reading and Norwich.

It has been reported that a large number of user profiles were potentially fake, predominantly those that were allegedly female. The investigation by Gizmodo revealed the extent of fake profiles, concluding: “When you look at the evidence, it’s hard to deny that the overwhelming majority of men using Ashley Madison weren’t having affairs. They were paying for a fantasy.”