Ashley Madison still growing despite hack, company claims, with 'hundreds of thousands of new users'

New users include 88,000 women, says Avid Life Media, as it tries to quash claims that site was populated almost entirely by men

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

Ashley Madison has signed up hundreds of thousands of new users in the past week, despite a huge hack that revealed the personal data of all of its users.

The site said that 87,596 of its new users in the last week were women, and denied reports that the site was used almost entirely by men. Those reports, which were created using leaked data, “made incorrect assumptions”, it said.

“Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated,” said Ashley Madison owner Avid Life Media in a statement. “The company continues its day-to-day operations even as it deals with the theft of its private data by criminal hackers.”

The hackers, calling themselves the Impact Team, took data from Ashley Madison and posted it online. As well as the details of users of the website, the hack included emails from Avid Life Media executives and details about the company’s operations.

The company complained about “some journalists” turning “the focus of the criminal act against Ashley Madison inside out, attacking us instead of the hackers”, in the statement. The site has come under sustained criticism since the hack, as journalists have suggested that the site should have been more secure and others claimed that the site had created fake accounts to pretend to be women and speak to men.

But Avid Life Media said that women “sent more than 2.8 million messages within our platform”, last week. It also claimed that the ratio of men to women who actively use the site was 1.2 to 1.