Flirting with the truth: Just 2,600 Hong Kong men paid to join Ashley Madison as hack reveals cheating site exaggerated numbers
Post analysis of leaked documents shows Hong Kong figure was far below initial claims, but the members spent HK$3m on the cheating website
When it launched here in 2013, online dating website Ashley Madison said it had hundreds of thousands of locals flocking to its site, ready to flirt with an affair.
In reality, analysis by the showed about 2,600 men paid a total of more than HK$3 million to chat up women, some of whom were reportedly fake profiles to lure customers.
The figures were gleaned from information on Ashley Madison leaked by hackers last month.
Names, emails and billing addresses for Hong Kong-based men who paid to try their luck on the now-deactivated adultery website were included in the leak.
Details for any women who signed up are harder to find, as they were not required to pay to participate in the website.
In 2013 Ashley Madison said it had clocked up 12,000 new members from Hong Kong within just a few days of its launch here, and already had 320,000 unique hits from within the city.
But analysis of hacked data revealed the service only had about 2,600 paying members, all male, in Hong Kong.
The vast majority of paid transactions took place between 2013 and June this year.
