Locals registered on adultery site

Figures published by The Times in London show Banbridge had 306 registered users on the Ashley Madison ‘infidelity’ website.

Craigavon as a whole had 999 people registered with the website, whose database of users was leaked across the globe last month, but individually Portadown and Lurgan both trail Banbridge, the former with 205 registered users, the latter, 208.

The figure for Armagh and the surrounding district was 552 while Lisburn is reported to have had 976 registered users. Not surprisingly, Belfast had the biggest number of registered users in Northern Ireland, with 8,520.

Launched in 2001, Ashley Madison claims to have over 40 million anonymous members worldwide and has the slogan, “Life is short. Have an affair”.

Its website has a section dedicated to ‘Infidelity News’.

An online dating service based in Canada and marketed to people who are married or in a committed relationship, it hit the headlines around the world earlier this summer when it emerged that details of more than 33 million accounts had been stolen.

As well as dealing with the data theft, the company that owns the website has also furiously denied recent claims that the vast majority of its female profiles are fake.

The Times revealed there are over 1.3 million British profiles contained on the leaked database.

It published details of the towns and cities from across the UK with over 100 registered users.

Billing itself as the world’s leading married dating service for ‘discreet’ encounters, Ashley Madison has stated it is “actively adjusting to the attack on our business and members’ privacy by criminals”.

A group of hackers calling itself ‘The Impact Team’ claimed responsibility for the theft of customer data, which was originally reported by a variety of media outlets in July.

They also threatened to reveal the data unless the Ashley Madison website was taken down.

The BBC reported the stolen customer data had been leaked on the so-called ‘dark web’, meaning it is accessible only via encrypted browsers.