Read Ars' take below to see what we found out in August 2014. Earlier this week, Ars got an e-mail from a reader named Rob Plant. But Plant was writing about a site called , which markets itself as a dating website for married people to find accomplices in extra-marital affairs. Plant, however, took issue with the way Ashley Madison treats its departing customers. I've decided today to get rid of all my online dating profiles not used them in years, have a longterm girlfriend etc. Now I don't care about my profile being up there it does offer the opportunity to hide it so that it can't be found and I'm no longer getting e-mails from them —but this does seem like a crappy way of a company extorting money out of a presumably wealthy audience eager to quickly hide the details of their sordid extramarital dealings. Of course, Ars couldn't resist the urge to look into a story involving sordid extramarital dealings and alleged extortion. As it turns out, however, the issue is a bit more nuanced. Ashley Madison does let users delete their profiles for free, but directions on how to do so can be confusing to the point where they appear misleading. Still, similar dating and social networking sites aren't much better—in fact, Ashley Madison's paid-delete service goes further in scrubbing you off its system than most other networking sites. Paying to totally erase the past The company's CEO Noel Biderman spoke to Ars over the phone and said that's just not the case. Ashley Madison's Hide My Profile Permanently option, he told us, is the same thing as deleting a profile on most other sites. Your identifying details will be deleted, but messages and pictures you've sent to others on the site behave like e-mail, and you can't get them back. But with a Full Delete, Biderman told Ars, Ashley Madison erases all identifying details, plus any photos and messages you may have sent to others. Removing messages you sent in the past is something few other sites will do. Facebook will and any pictures you've uploaded, but a spokesperson told Ars that Facebook can't take back messages you've sent. However, a receiver won't be able to see the sender's profile. We are receptive if people want those removed and will do it manually if someone requests. However, it's unclear if messages and photos can be scrubbed off the company's servers after permanently deleting your profile. Ars has contacted Match. Tinder also lets you from within the app. One of the few social network services that actually allows a user to remain in control of the photos and messages they send, even after they've sent them, is. Users can delete their sent communications off recipients' phones as long as the recipients haven't downloaded the images, of course at any time after it has been sent. However, the customers for Downlow don't seem to enjoy access to the Full Delete feature that scrubs their messages and photos from recipients' mailboxes for a fee. Still, Ashley Madison, Tinder, Match, OK Cupid... A site called Delete My Account says services like and don't allow you to delete your profile at all; deactivation is the only option. Ars has reached out to these companies but has not yet heard a response. For Ashley Madison, it seems like getting users to simply deactivate their accounts rather than permanently delete them might be just as good for business as pushing them to do a full delete. With an affair it's different, with an affair they feel like they need it, it ebbs and flows. The two sets of data are not comparable, however, so the OK Cupid statistic has been removed. The only delete you see is a full delete Still, if you look at the screen shot Plant sent with his e-mail, it's easy to see why he was confused. And he's hardly alone. After all, when you're sending illicit messages between people looking for affairs, you might really, really want that message that you sent deleted from someone else's inbox especially if that message could be used for blackmail. Ars later asked a spokesperson for Avid Life Media, the parent company of Ashley Madison, to confirm that number, and the spokesperson said that the number of Full Deletes the site sells each month varies between 8,000 and 18,000. Noel Biderman is both the CEO of Ashley Madison and Avid Life Media. Sorry ladies, Kieth26 is officially off the market. Biderman also told Ars that he didn't know why our reader, who wrote that he only ever signed in as a Guest user and had never purchased any credits, would want to do a Full Delete. But that's the problem: the reader didn't know he didn't need a Full Delete. Hiding something permanently is slightly clearer, but you don't get that option until you've made the choice between doing a Full Delete and Hiding your Profile. On the other hand, what you get for a Full Delete is probably entirely worth the money to enthusiastic users of the site. Few social networks let you take communication back, and if sporadic affairs are your thing, there are probably worse ways to spend your money. Ultimately, what Ashley Madison is doing is not totally dishonest, but it's not totally honest either. And we would guess that most people coming to a site for extramarital affairs have made peace with that kind of parsing of the truth. CNMN Collection WIRED Media Group © 2018 Condé Nast. Ars may earn compensation on sales from links on this site. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.
