Blog #1

The trademark photo from the Ashley Madison website.

What goes on in the dark, comes out on the Internet

How the Ashley Madison brand is handling the breach of their data.

Want to cheat on your spouse? There is a website for that and it’s called Ashley Madison. The dating site prided itself on providing to help people cheat on their spouse with guaranteed anonymity.  The website’s tag line is “life is too short, have an affair,” and it has over 32 million members. Unfortunately, hackers decided to breach the site and threaten to expose the member’s financial and personal information.

So how is Ashley Madison handling all this negative publicity? For starters, they are allowing members to cancel their accounts free of charge and are regularly keeping people updated via their social media accounts on this incident. The Avid Life Media is offering $377,000 to whoever can find the culprit. However, this might not be enough for members to keep faith in the brand.  The website’s main focus was allowing members to remain anonymous and that one thing has been tarnished. 

               This isn’t the first time hackers have breach the data of a huge company. Not too long ago Target and Sony were targets of a massive data breach. Hackers are constantly finding new ways to breach into a huge companies system because they know the information there is valuable information. There have been reports that two people have committed suicide and Josh Duggar has been accussed of having an account. It seems as though this incident is becoming worse by the week as new information continues to be revealed.

               Is there a way Ashley Madison can make a comeback?  According to a news article by PRWeek,  Mike Paul, The Reputation Doctor, stated “Ashley Madison's response should be to apologize with full accountability for its data breach and either prove to its customers that they have invested in and perfected its data security to guarantee there will not be another breach (which it can never do) or shut down permanently.”

               I agree with the above statement. I would advise Ashley Madison to showcase to their customers that they are taking the necessary steps to resolve this issue and prove to its customers that the security will be improved. The company has done neither. The company would have to re-brand itself completely if it wants to stay in business any longer.