All language subtitles for Ashley Madison - Sex Lies and Cyber Attacks (2016) 1080p Netflix WEB-DL DD+2.0 x264-TrollHD

Long before I launched Ashley
Madison there were affairs,

and long after I'm gone
there'll be affairs

and so what I'm just
trying to do is help people

have the most perfect affair.

Biderman says he built a
billion-dollar business

betting on infidelity.

25 million members
in 37 countries.

My phone was dancing across
the table. It was crazy.

They made it sound like it was this
play land of people hooking up...

...it had glamour, sex and crime,

hacking and danger.
It had everything.

Kind of a quick
hookup kind of site...

This is the story
of a website,

and the rise and fall of its
ambitious founder Noel Biderman.

The audacious Ashley Madison
dot com was set up in 2011

as a safe place to
arrange illicit affairs.

By 2006 the site had 1.1million
users in North America

and had
launched in Europe.

Its growth after that
was extraordinary.

-26 million people, that's growth!
-It's good business.

What is your goal?
Just keep goin'?

World domination,
keep going to the moon.

In 2007 Biderman became CEO

and found himself in the
middle of a media storm.

I'm not necessarily
encouraging infidelity

I don't think it needs
that much encouragement.

How are you not
encouraging infidelity?

Noel Biderman appeared
continuously on TV chat shows

defending and
promoting the site.

He called himself the
king of infidelity.

His wife, Amanda, also took
part in the promotions.

I see it as a platform that
helps people stay married,

they help millions of
people find contentment,

passion and happiness.

Noel said that society
was changing,

the model of relationships
that we have from the past

and at the moment
isn't working.

A lot of people are
having affairs and

it's all done behind
people's backs.

It's destructive for families.

And they said that they were leading
the way in helping with this.

I was separated
from my wife,

I was working a lot. It's
hard to meet people.

Christopher was looking
for a like-minded woman

to have an affair with.

The big attraction to it
was that it's a hookup,

it's not a date. There
isn't any of the risk,

you know, everybody
knows where they stand.

It was definitely more
geared towards sort of the,

as I like to say, the afternoon
delight, kind of situation.

Kind of a quick hook
up kind of site.

Like any dating site, users
had to choose profile names

and fill
in their preferences.

Experimenting with tantric sex.
One-night stand...

Although these choices
were a little more direct than usual.

...likes to be watched, cuddling
and hugging, and erotic movies.

Sounds like an
interesting weekend.

Tamsin is a marketing
consultant and a serial mistress.

She has chosen affairs to committed
relationships most of her life.

Initially, you know, men are very hesitant
to make the first move.

When we start talking
that's the first thing.

They want to find out, are you real?

Do you really live in the United States?

And that's when I would
start getting emails saying

that this woman checked
out your profile,

she wants to talk to you, this
person's interested in you.

And because if you
didn't have a paid account,

you hadn't bought the credits,

you couldn't see the actual
pictures of the profiles

they were all blurred.

Men had to buy credits

in order to reply to messages
sent to them.

And then once you start talking,
inevitably for some strange reason,

men have this insatiable desire
to send you dick pictures.

Pictures of their penises. Sometimes
it's even the first picture.

I don't even know what
their face looks like.

Okay.

People have affairs and cheat
for a lot of different reasons,

it's not always just physical.

We all like to think it's
that but in reality even men

the vast majority are seeking out an
affair for emotional reasons as well.

I did meet and talk
to quite a few men,

a lot of politicians...

A lot of corporate CEOs,
a lot of guys

who are just in middle management,
just not happy.

I mean that was one thing
about Ashley Madison,

you got everything from
construction workers and students

so it was pretty interesting.

People want more from
their relationships,

more from their lives and

not feeling so ashamed
to be honest about

what they really want.

People are gonna have
affairs anyway.

It's always happened,
it's on an increase.

It wasn't in the workplace.

It wasn't with close
friends of the family.

I got that concept.

It's less damaging,
people's needs get met.

Ashley Madison.com was bought

by another of Noel's companies,
Avid Life Media in 2007.

Their promotional videos gave a
veneer of corporate acceptability

to otherwise niche products.

Two years later they created
EstablishedMen.com and

CougarLife.com calling them
innovative dating services.

But the main money maker
was always Ashley Madison.

# Looking for someone
other than my wife #

# Other than my wife
Ashley Madison's right #

Ashley Madison
became known for their cheeky,

often outrageous press campaigns.

# other than my wife #

This cheesy advert
was banned by Australian regulators.

# Looking for someone
other than my wife #

# Other than my wife
Ashley Madison's right #

They courted
controversy around the world,

translating their glossy
ads everywhere they went.

In 2009 Tiger Woods was
caught cheating on his wife.

Within a week Ashley Madison
had offered to pay him

5 million dollars to be
the face of the brand.

He didn't take the money,
but 4 months later

they had sponsored the Tiger Woods
Mistress Pageant

on The Howard Stern Show.

Here's our guest
judge Noel Biderman.

Dude put up a hundred grand.

It seemed that
no gimmick was too tabloid.

...she's mistress number four.

The peculiar genius not just
of their marketing efforts

but I think of their leadership seems
to be to be able to take anything,

even negative news and turn it
into a promotional opportunity.

You are Tiger Woods Mistress,

here comes Noel Biderman with
a check for 75,000 dollars.

Despite the 2008
economic downturn, Ashley Madison appeared to be
recession-proof.

By 2015 Avid Life Media announced

that they had grossed
115 million dollars in the previous year,

up 45 per cent.

Pre-tax profits came in
at 55 million dollars.

But then, on 19th July last
year, everything changed.

Brian Krebbs, a tech journalist,

revealed that Ashley
Madison had been hacked.

Employees had opened
their computers

to find an illustrated
message on their screens.

The Impact Team hackers
threatened to publish

stolen data unless Ashley Madison
and Established Men

shut down
their controversial websites.

The consequences for
not complying as noted

in this threat would be the
release of Ashley Madison

and Established Men client list,

including their names, client
profiles and credit card data.

By the time I've read
the story it hit them,

it was all over the world.

I think every major news agency had
already covered it within 6 to 12 hours.

Avid Life Media

has been fully cooperating
with the police investigation.

This hack is one of the largest
data breaches in the world.

I was in a meeting
and all of a sudden

my phone started dancing
across the table,

and I'm trying to concentrate,

and I'm looking over

and I'm seeing the names
of business associates,

my business clients,
friends of mine,

people I had met on
Ashley Madison contacting me.

And my heart sank.

The hack appeared very
strange because

it was so hollywoodesque as
if it had been scripted.

Crazily so, I mean when you
cover hacks all the time,

it's always very dry.

Nobody's very interested in the details
of how they actually got the data

and spread it.
But this was different.

The impact team
gave Avid Life 30 days

to shut down their sites

enough time for the media
to get into frenzy.

The hackers were blackmailing with
the threat of more data to come.

Everyone was
desperate to know who was using

the world's number one
website for adultery?

When the company didn't comply,

over 30 million user details
were released

Across the world suspicious partners
frantically tried to find out

if their partner was among them.

One Australian radio show
went a step further:

They were happy to help trawl
through the data dump. Live on air.

When it came on the news
about the Ashley Madison hack

he sort of went a bit funny
and you've got his details

We've got his details here.
And his details have revealed

that he's actually on the website, Joe.

Are you freaking kidding me?

The ripple effect of the
impact team's actions

has and will continue to
have a long term social

and economic impact, and
they have already sparked

spinoffs of crimes and
further victimization.

I had quite a few of the gentlemen
that I had met and talked to

their wives were decimated and hurt

and they wanted to talk.

As of this morning we have two
unconfirmed reports

of suicides associated
because of the leak

of Ashley Madison's customers profiles.

This being covered as if
the CIA had been hacked.

What is so interesting here is that
somebody would want to do this.

...there's lipstick. Who is she?

Many celebrities,
politicians, religious leaders

and military personnel were
reported to be members.

Just tell me her name, you
might as well tell me.

This was brought to
wife's attention.

She has forgiven me for this
mistake that I've made.

I've sought forgiveness to God
and he's forgiven me

so I've been completely
cleansed of this sin.

After the frenzy
around user identities had died down,

the media turned its attention
to the business itself.

It became obvious that Avid Life Media
profited from a wide range of websites.

And not all of them
were dating services.

Ashley Madison's meteoric
rise continued unabated

and by 2015 they claimed to
have over 30 million users.

-Alex.

They even launched their very
own Affair Anywhere mobile app

and brazenly spread the
word around the globe.

But on the 19th July the site was
hacked with catastrophic effects.

It would become one of the largest
cyber breaches of all time.

Multiple sites are
now being downloaded

nobody is going to be able
to erase that information.

But despite the sensitivity
of the website,

we now know that

Ashley Madison was warned
of security vulnerabilities

a number of times before
the 2015 scandal.

The Philippines has become an
unlikely global cyber hotspot.

Jayson Zabate is a
Filipino hacker.

He managed to infiltrate
the website in the months

before the disastrous
hack of July 2015.

Just checking Ashley Madison
website.

I try to hack it.

I check the code and find
what is the flaw or the weaknesses.

Jayson is part of an international
community of cyber bounty hunters

known as white hat hackers.

My job is to help keep companies secure.
I don't want to be a black hat.

I am not a bad guy.

These hackers can make a
lot of money by showing

large companies where their
vulnerabilities lie.

Jayson pays his
university fees this way.

He found a way into
Ashley Madison relatively quickly.

I have found cross-site scripting and
bypassing cross-site request forgery.

That will allow an attacker
to change profile details.

Jayson told Avid Life Media

he had managed to find a
flaw in their security

and they paid him a small fee
in return for information.

But it was too late.

The Impact Team of hackers had
apparently been accessing

the site for a long time
before Jayson got there.

Impact Team claims they
had been watching the site grow

for some time to the tens
of millions of users.

And they said they wanted to stop
the next 60 million customers.

They likened Avid Life Media to
a drug dealer abusing addicts.

Joseph Cox believes
he is the only journalist

to have had contact with the
Impact hackers themselves.

Impact Team said when they hacked
Ashley Madison no one was watching.

As in there were very few
security barriers

to getting into the network
and they also said

it was possible to hop from
different parts of the network

with a very simple password.

And this had been in the
work for some time.

They said that they had
been exfiltrating the data

over a number of years.

Ashley Madison talked
a good game about their security

but as we've seen security was not
at the top of their agenda,

what was at the top of their
agenda was making money.

Jeremy Bullock is a data analyst

who used the information
released in the hack to analyze

Ashley Madison's business practices.

He was one of the first to identify
the company's use of fembots.

When he looked at the
email addresses of users,

he discovered 837 individual members

that all shared
the same email address.

These seemed to be fake profiles

who were programmed
to contact real users.

They have also been called
engagers or iconians.

These were algorithms
that enabled

Ashley Madison
to contact gullible men

and pretend to
be available women

and made them part with money.

Iconians would send
messages to users of the site.

In order for men to chat
back they would have to pay.

Why 837 rather than 80,000?
Because they didn't need 80,000.

You could move these 837 around,
you could make them different.

They were programs now,

they didn't have to be manually
manipulated.

Very very clever.

They made it sound like it was this
play land of people hooking up

and there's millions
of women here

and they're all
interested in you.

I had contact with probably
around 200 profiles

and out of that I believe I spoke
with one actual person.

But the idea that bots

and fake profiles were on the pages
of Ashley Madison was not new. As early as 2008
consumer attorney Fillippo Marchino

was preparing a case
against Avid Life Media

on behalf of disgruntled users.

One of the first things we
did is we pulled the terms

and conditions off of the
website of Ashley Madison

and buried in the middle
was a couple of sentences

that read something
to the extent of

"this is only an
entertainment website,

you may be responding
or contacted by robots"

and that just did
not sound right

because people were not
engaging AshleyMadison.com

to talk to robots.

That was not the crux of the idea.

Fillippo then came across
AshleyMadisonSucks.com,

a sounding board for
unhappy customers.

He discovered that
Biderman's company,

Avid Life Media was taking
legal action against the site.

We felt that AshleyMadisonSucks.com
was a rightful forum

for people to voice their opinions

and was in no way violative of
the trademark AshleyMadison.com.

Fillippo agreed to represent the owner

of AshleyMadisonSucks.com.

What happened then is
that things got strange.

The proverbial shit hit
the proverbial fan if you will.

We became the target of
online activities that

couldn't really be
traced back to anybody.

But that were borderline bullying,

if you will.

Suddenly web pages
were created blackmailing

Fillippo's client and threatening him
if he didn't take down

AshleyMadisonSucks.com.

False Things were
written about Fillippo,

his client, family members
and even his employees.

Anonymous emails were
sent with further threats

and untrue allegations:

one suggested that
Fillippo's client had HIV.

We were never actually
able to trace back

who these emails
were coming from

but it all started occurring
right at the same time.

It seemed to be a
coordinated attack

to dissuade my client from
proceeding with what he was doing.

In a separate effort
to get the site shut down,

Noel Biderman offered the owner
of AshleyMadisonSucks.com

money for the IP address.

He repeated his demands in a
phone call recorded by the owner

and in the presence
of two witnesses.

Give me the URL back

I offered you ten grand,
you're being an ass.

I'm being a schmuck.
You sent an email to my girlfriend.

You have no idea. Yeah
just wait for the world

of hurt I will bring on you.
Just wait.

I found out on the news
that they'd been hacked

and all their information
had been dumped.

I was very surprised to find
out that some documents

which had been exchanged
between us and them

which otherwise
should have been confidential,

were now public domain.

You email my girlfriend and tell her

that you're putting up a site
about her and she may have HIV.

I'm going to do so
much worse to you.

You're messing with
my livelihood.

You choose to be an ass.
I'm being one back

but I can be ten times worse.
I have way more resources than you.

You have 24 hours my friend.
I'm going to drag you through the mud.

The first dump of information

by The Impact Team of hackers
revealed

information about many
users of the site

but the hack didn't end there.

It seemed on the surface
to be cut and dry,

here is a company,
it's been hacked.

Here are all the victims.
There's the story the end.

It should have blown
over, but it didn't.

What came then
took the hack to the next level.

Plenty of data breeches
take customer data,

emails addresses, passwords maybe
some other customer information

and depending on the website
that can be relatively easy.

But to get emails,
product source-code,

internal documents, the hacker really
has to take several more steps

and really penetrate
a company's network.

The second dump
of information related to the company

and the CEO himself.

There was so much email.

I mean it was every
email from 2011,

2012 all the way till June 2015.

A lot of email.

I'm totally guessing here but what

it looked like
somebody had thrown

a USB stick in
someone's computers

and just dragged
over email files.

I looked less like a
hack than a copy.

Not all data breaches
become public, I mean

probably most of them
don't become public.

But the fact that
anybody can log on

to a website on the
so called dark web,

download this data and
see it for themselves...

I mean that's appealing.

I start looking through
the emails because...

I was interested in seeing if

I could figure out
who would do it.

I wanted to figure
out who did it.

Well, then I became an addict.

But as Gina,
the editor of ANewDomain.com,

looked through the emails

more questions came up.

Soon I was just looking in the
email trying to figure out,

what was Ashley Madison?

Was it really a dating site?
It didn't appear so.

Avid Life Media

the parent company
of Ashley Madison,

and headed by Noel Biderman
owned a lot of different websites

through many different
shell companies.

Some of these like Established
Men and Cougar Life

were publicly part
of the portfolio,

and some of them weren't so obviously
linked to Avid Life Media.

It isn't one dating site, it's many sites
in every major market in the world.

It's really a sprawling business and
a sprawling collection of websites

that appear to be designed
to get people to come in

to do other stuff.

And that stuff doesn't seem to
have a lot to do with dating.

The company owned websites

that seemed to cater for every
conceivable male fantasy.

Each one was slick and
targeted at a specific market.

So yes there's married women
that will have an affair with you,

that's Ashley Madison.

There's older women who will
have an affair with younger guys

that's Cougar Life.

Broke College Girls,
find a broke college girl

and maybe you could
be her sugar daddy.

There's that site. There's bondage
sites, there's gay sites,

if you can find a male fantasy,
there's a site for it.

All the websites had
one aim: to draw in male customers.

Ashley Madison user
Tamsin could see how

people got drawn
onto other websites.

I think it's become a
sort of a gateway drug,

if you will, for
relationships and websites,

and Internet dating of this
sort, that it's a good area

and a good site for people
to get their feet wet,

and then once they're
there, then the banners

for the more sort of
directed websites pop up.

One of Avid Life's
most popular websites

was Established Men.

It claims to be the premier
online dating service that

connects young, beautiful women
with rich, successful men!

The website makes it clear
women cannot advertise

their services as an escort

however many female users
are looking for

''a mutually beneficial arrangement'',
an MBA

a common online term for a
relationship often involving money.

A lot of times women are
looking for arrangements

because they're having
difficulty making ends meet.

And a lot of times men
are not in a position

to have a formal relationship
with all the bells and whistles

and responsibilities
that go along with it.

Marketing Consultant
Tamsin has lived

an arrangement lifestyle on and off
since she was 19.

This is more of a situation
where the man provides the woman

with an allowance, spoiling,
takes care of her travel expenses.

Enables her basically to be able to be
on his schedule on an as needed basis.

Like the term sugar-daddy,

a mutually beneficial
arrangement, is a relationship

where men and women
negotiate the terms.

A lot of those are escorts.
Some of them just boldly say "escorts".

But...

Escort services are illegal in the US
outside of a couple of areas

so you can't really come out and say:

"Hey, I'm a hooker!"
You know, it's illegal.

Avid Life Media also
owns ArrangementFinders.com,

a more blatantly erotic website.

Even though the website states

that it doesn't allow escorts
to use their service,

they actively encouraged girls

who would like some extra
income through dating to join.

Start dating the way
evolution programmed you to

and we can ship
bubbles right to you.

They created another
tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign,

this time with the porn star Kayden
Kross as the face of the brand.

We're not just
creating arrangements,

we are also creating new jobs.

-No jobs.

-Blow jobs.

When they deliberately
advertised outside a university

they made the news again.
People were stunned.

I'm here along Santa Monica
Boulevard near Overland Avenue.

A spokesperson for Avid Life
Media said the placement

and timing of the ad is part
of the company's strategy.

With graduation right
around the corner

and students looking
for jobs and money.

When we asked if this
was prostitution

the spokesperson said, "No,
it's intimacy with a twist."

But emails in the dump

purporting to be
from Noel Biderman's inbox

reveal that the company not
only knew they hosted escorts,

they actively sought them.

In one case it appeared that 2,500
escorts were emailed enticing them

to join Arrangement Finders.

When it worked they planned
to contact 45,000 more.

Some emails discussed the possibility
of bringing foreign women to the US

to work as sugar babies.

And how the company
would market them.

They also investigated how the women
could come to the US

by lying to the authorities.

ArrangementFinders.com

is one of Avid Life's
most successful sites.

And it was to take Noel Biderman

and Avid Life Media
in a new direction: movies.

He experimented with
product placement

and an unknown starlet.

It just happened to
be in hardcore porn.

The site is also known for its shocking,

deliberately provocative
marketing stunts.

This ad from 2013 featuring zombie
husbands and wives was banned

buying the company even
more free publicity.

But the owners of Ashley Madison,
Avid Life Media,

have a loose definition of dating.

It's so simple a
caveman could use it.

In their deliberately
lo-fi styled advert

for ArrangementFinders.com

Kayden Kross, the face of the
brand, explains what they do.

It's a dating site for all you
sexy silver backs out there

who think it's time for
a little arm candy.

And for all you arm candy to
get a bit of purse candy.

Are these dating options
any good you ask?

No.
But blowjobs are f**king great.

The company has denied
this is prostitution,

but rather intimacy
with a twist.

ArrangementFinders.com is interesting
for an additional reason:

this is the website that
took the CEO Noel Biderman

and his team into the
world of pornography.

I took some photos of myself in a state
of undress in a bank on Wall Street.

And then the photos went viral.

The bathroom was not a public
it was a private bathroom

and I used to take pictures in
there when I was bored anyway

just cause I'm a millennial
and we do things like that.

And within days, literally days, they
went completely viral over the Internet.

And I was dubbed
"The Wall Street porn star"

before I even decided
if I wanted to do porn or not.

But at that point I was committed right?

You've got that Ashley
Madison investment right?

Yeah, and we're working on
some other interesting stuff.

Veronica Vain would
become Noel Biderman's leading lady.

Screwing Wall Street,

the Arrangement Finders IPO was the
first fully-branded porn film,

full of not-so-subtle
product placement.

Veronica was offered the
lead part as her porn debut.

The story was a spoof of the
original Hollywood film Wall Street.

You wanna work with me?

The reason I was really
interested in this deal

I knew that it was
pretty groundbreaking

what they were doing.

Even if it wasn't necessarily the
best way to go about it at the time,

the fact that they were doing it

and that they were a
mainstream brand.

You were good enough
to get in my office.

Let's see it you're
good enough to stay.

That movie wasn't really
the gold mine for him,

he wasn't just looking for
his brand to be in porn.

Just the fact that
it was my name

and I was this girl who was being
portrayed as being young and cute

and having a good
head on her shoulders.

I was the girl he wanted
to sell to all these guys.

The plan worked very well.

The clips that were released for free
have had over three million views

but it was Veronica's
association with the brand

and appearances on
legitimate news channels

that really had an effect.

I always wanted to do something

more entrepreneurial with my career

I knew I wasn't fit for a
more conservative environment

and I saw an industry that's undergoing
a new wave of innovation

and I really wanted
to be a part of it.

The site had 200 per cent
increase in overall web traffic

but more impressively a 400
per cent increase in signups.

Which I think it's basically saying that
if you were going to Arrangement Finders

as a result of seeing me in this clip
or in the media or something

you're almost immediately
converting into a member.

It was another major
marketing success for Noel Biderman.

Why do you think Noel
was so clever at this?

Speaking as an entrepreneur
myself most entrepreneurs

when they come up with an idea

it's because they saw a market need
for something that they needed.

Most entrepreneurs
won't just like:

"Oh, people need this but
I don't really want it."

Most entrepreneurs when
they start something

they want the product that's
why they are making it.

So I can only imagine that he might have
wanted to have some sort of affair,

or make it easier
to have affairs.

And that's quite brilliant that he went
to the market

being like ''I don't have affair,

I'm happily married blah blah, I just
like start this for other guys.''

If your husband was
cheating on you,

would you be OK with him going
to a site such as yours?

Absolutely not, that's not
what I signed up for.

Noel was the master
of press interviews.

He often included his
wife in the discussion.

And I live in a traditional
situation with Noel and...

And he was always clear: he had
never had an extra-marital affair.

And I would be devastated
if he did this to me.

But information released
in the Ashley Madison hack

revealed that Noel
did have affairs,

in fact, it appeared
that over three years

he had had relationships
with a number of women,

many of whom he had met through
his own site, Established Men.

Noel frequently discussed
money with these women

and even offered one
work at Avid Life.

He appears to have been
a serial sugar daddy himself.

It seems that very little of the Ashley
Madison story was as it appeared.

It's hard to know if the mainstream
media would have given Noel

and his company quite
so much airtime

if they'd known all that was
happening behind the scenes.

I don't think Ashley Madison
is inventing prostitution.

I think what the emails suggest they're
doing is helping to automate it.

And making it very easy.

Just like Google didn't
invent looking stuff up.

To my knowledge, Ashley Madison,
they're not running a prostitution ring

or their own escort service that's
against the law or anything like that.

What I find more immoral
is about the way

they deal with reporters
and journalists,

misleading them into thinking that the
company is something that it isn't.

But that's not illegal either.

Because they're
a private company

and they can tell people anything
they want to about their business.

I think Ashley Madison were
brilliant at marketing

they seemed to know
what the papers wanted.

And they would take this
little seed of truth,

blow it up and that was probably what
made them so successful in the media.

You need to get a little bit more
with times, and to be honest...

Louise Van der Veld

is a professional
sex and relationship counselor.

She was employed
by Ashley Madison

as a media spokesperson in 2013,

although she soon fell out
with the company over money.

She did get an insight into
how the company worked.

...because the relationship model is
fundamentally flawed from the off.

When I first agreed to
be their spokesperson,

it was very much me coming from
an authentic point of view,

about my beliefs about my experience of
working with couples who had affairs.

A lot of that kind of got ditched

and they totally glamorized it
with a shocking headline approach.

And the hacked emails
revealed not just exaggeration,

but deliberate deception
of the media.

Even blue chip publications
fell for their stories.

Forbes is one of the world's
largest financial publications,

it's one of the most respected
financial publications in the world.

Noel and Avid Life Media

were cultivating
a relationship with a journalist

who was trying to get a piece
commissioned by the magazine.

Forbes editors had agreed
to do an article about them

and their fantastic growth but
they wanted to see some numbers.

And from the trail of emails
you see employees saying,

woah I can do up this chart and I
can make up this set of data points

a lot of it seems to
be largely invented.

The company appears
to have dramatically exaggerated

the financial figures for
the Ashley Madison website.

All those websites, all those
affiliate marketing deals.

All the many different
little revenue streams

that Ashley Madison and Avid

and its related companies
have all over the world.

But how could Forbes have known about
all of that? And back then nobody did.

Noel's dream was for Ashely Madison

to be listed on the stock market

and sell its shares to the public through
what's called an IPO.

We're a huge company. Maybe
you can help us with the IPO,

I think it's about time we go and raise
a billion bucks and show the world.

That's interesting!

It could happen. If you looked at our
business with a blind on it right?

You just looked at
the numbers and

the growth and the membership
and you go oh my God

this thing is worth billions...

Noel wanted everyone
to look at the business

through a filter. To cover the entire
empire of sex sites, porn affiliates

and escort listings with the
blanket of Ashley Madison.

Because Noel was so good at
making it look mainstream and OK,

and commonplace and
OK to talk about,

I think people were more likely
to be able to talk openly

about AshleyMadison.com
than they are about PornHub.com.

So if Forbes comes out and says: ''Wow! Ashley Madison
is one of the largest,

most successful dating sites in history,

it's nearly a billion-dollar company
then 8 other major publications

the world over will say ''Wow! Forbes,
Bloomberg, it must be true.''

I mean with nobody
really questioning,

could this really be a billion-dollar
company

45 per cent growth in one year really?

You really can't blame Ashley Madison
for taking advantage of a lazy press.

In September 2015,
two months after the hack,

another Forbes
article was written:

"We really don't know how big Ashley
Madison was, although I'm pretty sure

that it was nowhere near
as big as it seemed."

But while the hack appears
to have revealed so much

about the users and
owners of the website,

we know very little about
the hackers themselves.

A year later no one has
been arrested for the crime

and the case is still ongoing.

Avid Life Media is offering
a 500,000 dollar reward

to anyone providing information
that leads to the identification,

arrest and prosecution
of the person or persons

responsible for the leak of
the Ashley Madison database.

And no one has collected
that half a million-dollar reward.

Standby.

Good looking, healthy,

certainly old enough to get married,
what a lovely picture

this bride and groom make each
is a dream in the others mind.

Many marriages were rocked

when the user details
of AshleyMadison.com

were leaked last year.
Divorce lawyers claimed

it was Christmas in September
for the industry.

Why does it have to
happen this way for them?

Whose fault was it?

The dating industry was also rocked.

Shortly after the hacked emails
of Noel Biderman were published,

Avid Life Media announced that he
had agreed to step down as CEO.

They said this was in the best
interests of the company.

Team Impact, this is
your wake up call.

Your actions are illegal
and will not be tolerated.

But the police still
have no idea who did it.

The hackers called
themselves The Impact Team,

an anonymous-style group

who called the users of Ashley
Madison cheating dirt bags

and accused Avid Life of profiting
from the pain of others.

This kind of hack is
known as hacktivism.

Hacker house near Manchester, is filled
with people who know that world.

If you understand the rules of somebody
else's system better than they do,

then you effectively get to
rewrite the rules of the game.

Trying to take down a website that
promotes unfaithfulness between couples.

It could be considered
vigilantism.

Is it ok to cheat on your wife?

Because you can do it behind
closed doors on this website,

and then what happens
when that is exposed?

Are we all now supposed
to feel sorry for you?

I personally would never
do anything illegal,

but when the Ashley Madison
thing happened it was like

yeah good on them!

A lot of big hacktivists, I
mean this is what they go for,

they try to expose big
corporate companies.

The means of going in and
shutting down some other site,

it's still breaking the law.

It's getting serious, we're seeing more
the effect it will have on

on people's lives.

Hacker House was set up to try

and bring hackers into the mainstream
and not to break the law.

But The Impact Team's action
was more than just illegal.

Whether they thought the reason
behind it was purely moral,

only they can answer.

But it's not like this was
a victimless crime at all,

I mean people killed themselves.

We still have no idea
who hacked Avid Life Media,

and for what true motive.

They didn't appear to
make money from the hack,

so there must have been
a different reason.

Some people think
it was a competitor

I'm of the belief that it was
probably a competing website.

That may have masterminded
or saw the opportunity.

May have planted an employee
over a period of time.

Or they were the ones that
handled the hack externally.

One theory was that
it was an inside job.

There is chance that the Impact
team was just an insider.

Judging by the quality and
richness of the data.

Internal email,
product source code,

they likely had to be on
the company network itself

rather than just the website.

I believe that someone
had a personal problem with the CEO

or the executives at the company

and felt cheated in some way

where they were getting revenge.

Judging by the way that I
was treated by the company

and the way that they just seemed
used to dealing with employees

that were not happy

I think it possibly was an inside job.

Lots of people could have had a motive

to either harm either Avid in general
or Noel specifically.

People inside, people outside.

This was a company that
sued a lot of people,

fired a lot of people.

Finding a person with
a motive is too easy.

There's too many
people with motives.

But whoever did it,

the real world impact
of Ashley Madison continues.

Anybody who's been
through what I've been through

through would love to
see that site down.

Long before the hack,

Ashley Madison had been
helping to destroy marriages.

Many of the real women on the
site were from rural areas.

When the hack happened you can
actually go and see per area,

Utah, Idaho... where they had some of
the highest Ashley Madison accounts.

And these are conservative,
rural areas.

It's something that actually
is not very surprising to me.

In 2012, several years
before the hack,

Jim received some
messages on his phone.

By accident one of his wife's
accounts was networked to his cell.

I started getting emails
and text messages

between my wife and another guy
telling him "I'm gonna start a
fight with my husband

and figure out some way
to go meet up with you."

I threw up. I actually threw up.

In the end, Jim was able

to recover many
of the messages his wife had sent.

Stuff you can never un-know,
you can never un-see

There was a video. Someone sent me
a video, it was her having sex.

Jim discovered that his wife

had had affairs with six different men
on the Ashley Madison website. It's like a drug, it's
like you're addicted.

You want more, you want that
adrenaline, you want that feeling.

That's the only way
I can think of it.

I have these...

5 little kids.

I did not want them to be raised...

in a broken home.

I felt like it was my fault,
I felt responsible.

I just tried talking to her
and explaining, I love you,

we have 5 kids, let's not
destroy this family.

But in the end it was
impossible to reconcile:

the couple divorced.

It took a long time before I
stopped getting nauseous,

like physically wanted to throw
up any time I saw Ashley Madison.

Until the hack. That was a good day.

We don't know who
did the hack, but we do know that

The Impact Team has threatened
to do more attacks.

I asked the Impact team whether they
were going to hit any other companies

and they said, essentially, sure.

Maybe even politicians.

All systems have weaknesses.

Even the biggest social networking sites.

There is no such thing as a secure system.

As more of our lives become
intertwined with the digital world,

cars having connection to
the internet for example,

hacking is only going to increase.

Is that scary?

Yeah!

Greeting citizens of the free world.