Ashley Madison is a controversial website encouraging cheating and affairs between people in long-term monogamous relationships, without their partners’ knowledge or consent. As such, it has been the focus of much controversy throughout its tenure on the internet; which is not to mention the massive data breach which exposed its users’ information to the public a few years back.
If you wish to use Ashley Madison to have an affair, you will have to pay to do so, unless you’re a woman. This is because (as is explained in more detail in the FAQs), Ashley Madison infamously hosts millions of female ‘bots’ to lure male clients. Making messaging free to women is a way for the founders of Ashley Madison to attract real female clients onto the website.
Alternatively, you can sign up for a 1-month free trial of the site, and thus message any number of accounts for free (until that month is up). Just bear in mind that you will have to create a full membership account, and input payment details, either way.
So there you have it: if you want to message on Ashley Madison without paying, you have two options: if you’re female, you can create an account and message for free. If you’re male or non-binary, you have to pay to message (and receive messages), but you could resort to a 1-month free trial, during which you would not pay a dime for any amount of messages.
If you’re having doubts, or would like some more information, see our FAQ section below. Remember, if you’re thinking of having an affair, then it’s almost certainly healthier and better for all involved to tell your partner how you feel, rather than cause them greater hurt in the long run by pursuing someone else.
Table of Contents
FAQs
What is Ashley Madison?
Ashley Madison is a dating website exclusively for people in long-term monogamous relationships and marriages who are looking to have a secret affair. Ashley Madison’s tagline is, controversially, “Life is short. Have an affair.”
On Ashley Madison, its some 54 million users (mostly in Brazil, the USA, and Spain) are able to connect with each other, message, send ‘winks’ and ultimately plan their affairs together.
Why does Ashley Madison have a bad reputation?
Ashley Madison understandably has a controversial reputation. It has garnered a reputation as a “business built on the back of broken hearts”, since its sole purpose is to encourage cheating between two people whose respective partners have no knowledge of their affairs. Use of the site has led to many broken homes, children with divorced parents, and worse.
Users of the site have also complained that of the hundreds of accounts they’ve connected with, only a handful have been real human users. Ashley Madison is infamous for being populated by many millions of bots (mostly ‘female’), designed to attract heterosexual male users to the idea that it is a website full of possibilities for extra-marital sex.
In fact, part of the reason that it is free for female users to message and receive messages on Ashley Madison (as discussed above) is that the founders of Ashley Madison are actively trying to attract real human women users to the site – a task which seems to be proving difficult. One male user stated that out of 200+ accounts he was in contact with, only 1 account belonged to a real person.
Ashley Madison also has a bad reputation as being an unsafe site, following a massive data breach a few years ago which leaked all of the private information, messages, addresses, payment details and pictures/videos of Ashley Madison users to the public.
Is it safe to use Ashley Madison following the data breach?
Since the data breach (described above) Ashley Madison has allegedly been taking steps to make its site more secure and private. However, there are still issues surrounding the sending and receiving of media (pictures and videos), which may mean these are very easily accessible by non-members.
Similarly, any site which has suffered a data breach on the scale of Ashley Madison, and which has as controversial a reputation, is never going to be 100% trustworthy in terms of user privacy and security.
