Ashley Madison Cheating Website Gains 4 Million New Users After Hackers Released Information

As we get ready to bid adieu to 2015, and ring in the new year with a bang, we are looking back at one of the year's biggest controversies. While the year was filled with A List breakups and cheating scandals, it seems that one online site might have played a part in both of these things. Ashley Madison is a site where married people go to find some extramarital activities to partake in with other willing members. While the site got hacked and millions of users' information was released to the public, it seems that the negative publicity which the site suffered hasn't stopped people from signing up for it.

In fact, according to E! News, the site has actually seen a pretty staggering rise in membership. The news site reports that at the time of the leak that over 39 million people belonged to the site, however now it appears that the homepage says that there are 43 million members that have profiles.

You know what they say, no publicity is bad publicity, and it seems that the site played right into that, as they got exposure from constantly being featured on the news since some notable people were part of the leak, according to Perez Hilton.  Some notable cheaters caught in the scandal included 19 Kids and Counting star Josh Duggar, as well as Real Housewives of New York City husband Josh Taekman and Christian Vlogger Sam Reader.

A photo posted by Josh Taekman (@jmtaekman) on Dec 25, 2015 at 9:56am PST

However, according to CNN Money, a spokesperson for the parent company of Madison, Avid Life Media isn't opening up about reasons behind the sudden increase in members. He revealed that the company had no update since releasing a statement to the press back in August when the leak first occurred.

The site is also claiming that Madison decided to beef up the security protocols for members so that this wouldn't happen again, which could also possibly be a reason for the increase in new users.  Of course, a chunk of the new members could also have possibly been journalists who signed up during the scramble to report on the hacking and information release scandal.  Perhaps the company will speak out on the new memberships at a later time but for now they remain quiet.