Netflix is delivering with its documentaries of late, exposing social media stalking in Can I Tell You A Secret? and true crime mystery American Nightmare. Next up is Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal, which recounts the true tale of hackers leaking the user information of a dating website for people looking to have affairs.
It's described in the trailer as telling a story of a “witch hunt”, the “biggest hack of all time”, a “giant whodunnit”, charting the experiences of humilated users s their identities were exposed.
The site still exists to this day – it has over 70 million users, in fact – but what happened during the hacking scandal in 2015? Here's what we know about the Netflix documentary that charts its story.
The true story behind Netflix docuseries Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal
So the Ashley Madison site featured in the Netflix documentary existed in real life, rising to prominence in the early Noughties as the first – and only, at the time at least – dating website specifically for married people looking to have affairs with other married individuals or single people. Its slogan was: “Life is short. Have an affair.”
It was controversial at the time, with critics accusing its mission of breaking up marriages and families, and one telling TIME that it was “rebranding infidelity”. Noel Biderman, the site's founder, defended it to the LA Times in 2009: “Infidelity has been around a lot longer than Ashley Madison,” he said. “Given that affairs are going to happen no matter what, maybe we should see Ashley Madison as a safe alternative.”
However, in August 2015, 14 years after the site was launched, hackers revealed the identities of the site’s 37 million users. The data that was leaked included users’ login details, email addresses, payment transaction history and passwords.
The Netflix documentary speaks to the ordinary people effected, even though reportedly a number of famous people were exposed or said to be involved, including Hunter Biden and reality TV star Snooki's husband Jionni LaValle.
The series looks to reveal how a regular user might have been impacted by the breach, as well as how it helped some users to strengthen their relationships, open or otherwise. It also looks at how the partners of users felt about the data breach and the discovery that their wife, husband, boyfriend or girlfriend was using the site. The documentary also looks at the impact of fake profiles being set up on the site, with one woman having three men believing they were in relationships with her, even though she'd not been an active user on the site at the time.
Toby Paton, the series director of Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal has revealed in a statement, per Variety, that the aim of the documentary was to exploring users’ attraction to the site instead of shaming them.
He wrote: “Rather than berating people who joined Ashley Madison we were much more interested in exploring why they were drawn to the site — what were they looking for? What was going on in their relationships? And crucially — what was their partner’s side of the story?”
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal release date
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal dropped on Netflix on 15 May and is available to stream now.
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal trailer
The trailer outlines how the Ashley Madison site was “ahead of its time”, in how it allowed users to explore its deepest darkest desires. It also explores the way cyber security reared its head as a concept, and how users felt about their information getting out.
Sam's name was among those exposed in the Ashley Madison hack.
