Ashley Madison fires back, says ratio of men to women is 1.2 to 1 with thousands still signing up

Hacking victim Ashley Madison wants you to know that reports of its demise are premature, and that reports that there are no women on the site are totally bogus.

In a new blog post today, the company said that thanks to the publicity, “hundreds of thousands” of new users have signed up this week, including 87,596 women.

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“Recent media reports predicting the imminent demise of Ashley Madison are greatly exaggerated,” the company said. “The company continues its day-to-day operations even as it deals with the theft of its private data by criminal hackers. Despite having our business and customers attacked, we are growing.”

The statement comes just a couple of days after Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman left the company following a major hack and leak of its internal data. Last week, reporter Annalee Newitz of Gizmodo analyzed that data and concluded there were virtually no real females actually using the service.

In the post, Ashley Madison said her analysis and assumptions were incorrect.

“Last week alone, women sent more than 2.8 million messages within our platform,” the company said. “Furthermore, in the first half of this year the ratio of male members who paid to communicate with women on our service versus the number of female members who actively used their account (female members are not required to pay to communicate with men on Ashley Madison) was 1.2 to 1.”

The company noted that its app is the 14th highest grossing app in the social networking category in the U.S. Apple App Store. It also said that 70 percent of that revenue comes from members who make repeat purchases, indicating that customers are more than satisfied.