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It might be in the midst of a hacking scandal, with millions of pieces of data allegedly belonging to the site’s users appearing online, but Ashley Madison has actually experienced a surge in popularity this week.
The adultery website’s official companion app has enjoyed a rankings boost on Apple’s App Store despite seeing the personal details of more than 30 million users appear online.
According to analytics website App Annie, the app jumped up the download charts on Wednesday – after personal data began appearing on the Dark Web.
In the UK chart, the app rose 483 places from 1,198th to 715th – bearing in mind there are more than 1.6 million apps in the App Store. Within the Social Networking section of the store it also rose to 51st position – one of its highest placings ever.
The reason for the boost in downloads appears unclear – suspicious partners may want to see what the app is, while others may have only heard of the service for the first time because of this week’s very public data dump.
Clearly the prospect of ending up on an online database of “cheaters” is not necessarily off-putting for everyone, with Excel spreadsheets and even heat maps already being created based on the location of the supposed users of Ashley Madison – whose slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair.”
It would appear that the old adage “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” still rings true.
