LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: The world of tech which is the origin of life-changing apps has often wandered down dark paths while brainstorming the Next Big Thing in people's lives. Many films and documentaries have come forward to provide much-needed insight into these applications which squirrel away the data of millions of people while connecting them across borders.
One of the most questionable and controversial apps made in recent times with a considerable amount of popularity and impact was the Ashley Madison App. The app's idea was based on people cheating on their partners with strangers they found through the platform. The streaming site Hulu has revealed the many hidden secrets of the 'infidelity app' in the upcoming documentary called 'The Ashley Madison Affair', including the major data breach that shook users to the core.
Who owns Ashley Madison?
The dating site Ashley Madison has had a very turbulent history in terms of its corporate machinery. The app was first developed and founded in 2001 by Darren J Morgenstern along with Noel Binderman, who later also became the company's CEO. While it was smooth sailing at the start with the application doing great for years, a data breach changed everything. The news that the data of many users along with CEO Binderman's emails had been stolen by hackers caused absolute chaos.
Binderman had to step down from his position in 2015, the year of the breach. He is currently working as a Strategic Advisor for iGaming. The dating app was owned by Avid Life Media which later re-branded itself and became Ruby Corp., the current owner of the app. After Binderman, the app had another set of retirements from the CEO position and currently, Paul Keable is the one behind the app as the Chief Strategy Officer.
What is Hulu documentary about?
It is safe to say that the dating app was problematic in more ways than one which included having a name with incredibly misogynistic connotations and the promotion of infidelity as a perfectly valid choice for adults. But even if we were to overlook the moral conundrums of such a site, the cavalier way the app handled its users data was unforgivable.
Like any social media platform, this one too had access to the personal data of millions of people. What is more the site relied on providing the desired confidentiality to those going behind their partners' back to pursue someone else. So, a data breach struck at the very root of the app's USP and had anxious users sweating over ever having used the app. The Ashley Madison data breach was therefore in no way comparable to similar app data breaches at that time.
The Hulu documentary 'The Ashley Madison Affair' puts its focus on this particular data breach. It was reported that the hackers demanded only for the site to be taken down. If it wasn't, they would release the data of the users, probably with the intention of exposing how questionable the initiative was. When the company disregarded the threat of the hackers, the data of millions of users was revealed to the world along with a huge amount of email data of the then CEO Binderman. In such a situation, a public boycott of the site could not be the solution any longer. Once the users were 'outed', there were real-world consequences like suicides, as reported by The Guardian.
