01x03 - Live in truth

[bunniefuu]

Hey, guys, as you may have seen,

my name has been associated

with an Ashley Madison account.

[disturbing music plays]

This was brought to my wife's attention.

She has forgiven me

for this, uh, mistake that I made.

I never had an affair with anybody,

ever, while I've been married with Nia.

Um

Gosh.

So dumb, man.

[producer] Was that true,

what you said in the video?

No, what I said in the video was mostly

Pretty much all lies.

It was just like, "Protect yourself, man."

This is what the atonement's all about,

forgiveness and second chances.

And I just wanna add too, guys,

I have forgiven Sam,

and I stand behind him.

This is in our past.

It's unfortunate

that it's being dug up right now,

but our marriage is worth fighting for,

and it always will be.

Ah, I'm I'm just like a little shocked

after watching it, to be honest.

I'm like, "Whoa."

Took me back for a minute.

[exhales sharply]

I look at me in that video,

and I see a naive, hopeful

um

kind of blinded girl.

It's really strange, like, knowing

that hours later

I'm gonna think totally opposite.

[theme music plays]

[rhythmic music plays]

Watch out, cheaters, or anybody

who used the website Ashley Madison.

[woman] Hackers released thousands

of e-mail addresses

and very private information

on the dark web for everybody to see.

This is a horrendous

and horrific invasion of privacy,

and it's very dangerous.

[Amit] This was a difficult time

to navigate.

We had the exec team, who were so swamped

that they didn't really have time

to answer our questions.

[Evan] We still didn't know

who was responsible.

The theories were all over the place.

Maybe it was a competitor.

Maybe it was a a jilted wife.

Cheating husband.

A disgruntled employee.

To be honest,

I also thought it could be an anti-Semite

because of some of the threats

Noel had received.

[man] The Impact Team,

they sound like people who've been

judging people for a long time,

and in this country and in most countries,

they tend to be fundamentalists.

Theories are as wild as they come.

The media interest was crazy

around the world.

We've all heard

of that naughty website Ashley Madison.

- Ashley Madison.

- [woman] Ashley Madison.

[speaking Spanish]

AshleyMadison.com.

The dating website that caters to people

looking for extramarital affairs.

[André] Press talking

about Ashley Madison,

that was a lot of publicity

for the company.

My thinking was,

maybe this was a publicity stunt.

[troubling music plays]

Okay, is the company responsible for this?

And even Noel was, for me, a suspect.

Noel, he just seemed

like he might have had

many secrets.

[intriguing music plays]

[Amit] When we were in the middle

of all this frenzy,

Noel stopped showing up to the office.

It felt unnerving

that the very head of the company

is not around

to sort of steer the ship

through this crisis.

[Evan] People were freaking out.

At that point,

I thought it couldn't get any worse.

And then the sh*t really hit the fan.

[intense orchestral music plays]

Now the Ashley Madison hack,

well, getting worse.

Hackers releasing yet another data dump,

this one larger than the last.

Hackers releasing

a second mountain of data

just days after posting

tens of millions of e-mail addresses.

[Joseph] The Impact Team struck again,

and they dumped

an even larger cache of files.

Close to 20 gigabytes of data.

Intellectual property, trade secrets.

[Joseph] Internal documents, files,

spreadsheets, floor plans.

Everything a company

does not want about itself

broadcast for anybody

on the Internet to download.

[reporter 1] The second wave appears

to include a massive amount of e-mails

from CEO Noel Biderman.

[Claire] Noel's entire personal

and work e-mail inboxes

for years going back were dumped online.

As a journalist, my first thought is,

"Let me get my hands on them.

I wanna look through them."

[Evan] It was his whole e-mail account.

I think he knew at that point

how dangerous it would be

if they were released.

This is, ya know, some real serious

personal information.

[reporter 2] This has the potential

to be one of the messiest

and most legally troublesome

data dumps in history.

We're being greeted by fans

right away, guys.

After we posted the forgiven video,

it was the next day,

we woke up and pretended

like nothing ever happened.

This is Vlogger Fair, guys.

This is what it looks like.

[Nia] So we went to Vlogger Fair

on the second day,

and a lot of the embarrassment

had washed away from me.

He's been so sweet to me

the last few days.

It felt like there was an understanding

that a man could be curious, you know?

Yeah, you did somethin' dumb,

and you're gonna say sorry.

[audience cheering]

I kinda had this feeling inside like,

"It is all going to be okay."

I was really sure

that he really didn't cheat on me

or have an affair.

- Yeah.

- Oh my gosh, I'm so excited.

[intriguing music plays]

We left Vlogger Fair.

[indicator tone]

I remember our family text-message thread

was kinda goin' off.

I wasn't keeping up with it very well.

But I did notice a text

from one of the brothers saying,

"Sammy, you have to be fully honest."

[Sam] And my wife is like,

"What is he talking about?"

I'm like, "He's just tryin' to start crap.

Just ignore it."

"No idea what he's talking about."

[anxious piano music plays]

I was thinking.

I was sittin' next to this woman

that I loved so much,

and I was still having to lie to her.

I was keeping a lot of secrets from Nia.

The secrets I were keeping from her

went a lot deeper than Ashley Madison,

and a lot further back.

My intention was to go to my grave

with this and not tell her.

Again, she asked me,

"What is your brother talkin' about?"

I remember that really frustrating me.

I was just like, "Come on!"

[Sam] I was in a panic.

Everything was toppling on top of me.

I said, "I'm gonna pull over

for a minute."

[Nia] Sam got out of the car.

I didn't know what was going on.

[Sam] I called my pastor,

who's also a good friend of mine.

I answer, and then Sam is letting me know

that something terrible has happened.

Hearing his shame and embarrassment,

he knows that his life

is about to explode.

I'm starting to realize a little bit

that I gotta tell Nia something else,

and I desperately don't want to,

and I want to hear my pastor

tell me that I don't have to

and that we can keep it between us.

I said, "This is what living in dishonesty

has brought you."

Now you need to live in truth.

I was like, "Oh man."

That was the, uh, the tipping point.

I knew that in order to stop lying

I had to confess the truth of the past.

[Nia] Eventually Sam got back in the car.

And he was like,

"I have a lot more to tell you."

"And it's not good."

[reporter] Ashley Madison

is scrambling to deal with

the release of more confidential material.

[reporter 2] The hackers also releasing

the contents of Biderman's own e-mails.

[woman] I got really excited when I heard

they were gonna expose his e-mails.

Oh my gosh, I could not wait to see

the stuff that they were gonna release.

[surf-rock music plays]

I used to be a former adult entertainer.

Oh my.

My pistachio for the world to see.

[chuckles]

- [producer] Pistachio?

- Pistachio. [giggles]

You're welcome.

You won't be able to forget it.

Here comes Michelle McGee, a tattoo model

who has sold a story to In Touch magazine.

People generally know me from the scandal

with Jesse James and Sandra Bullock.

[anchor] Five weeks of nonstop sex

[Michelle] I had an affair

with Jesse James.

It was all over the media.

Ashley Madison reached out.

They thought we could do

some cross-promotional work.

They were gonna put me out there

as, ya know, the mistress, the villain,

the cheater that breaks up marriages.

[elevator dings]

The first time I met Noel,

he came in with his family,

and he had the impression

of being very clean-cut,

very straight, very conservative.

But when the family left,

the real Noel kinda came out.

I don't really think he's a good person.

I think Noel has many faces,

and he knew what was gonna be released

in his e-mails,

what he was trying to hide from people.

He must have been sh1tting himself.

Thinking, "If they start digging,

they'll find the real Noel."

[jazzy music plays]

[Claire] When I downloaded the e-mails

and was about to look through them,

it was exciting.

Sort of this treasure trove

of information.

But it also felt

It felt a little bit wrong.

There is really personal stuff

in those e-mails

about Noel and his life and his family.

[woman] You don't cheat?

No. Ironically, one of the major benefits

of running this business is

if anyone should know what it takes to be

in a successful relationship, it's me.

It's about communication.

I talk about this topic 24/7.

My wife and I are honest with one another

about what we need in our relationship.

Noel would put himself out there

as a married man

who claims to have never been cheating

on his wife.

The point is that it's a business,

and it's really separate from our life.

That's not the way you live your life?

Not at all.

[woman laughs]

Noel, the king of infidelity,

who claims to not cheat on his wife,

absolute catnip for producers,

and media just ate it up.

- Are you married?

- I am happily married.

I guess people find it ironic

that I am in a monogamous marriage.

[audience applause]

[Claire] But evidence came out in

the e-mails fairly quickly that actually

Noel had been having affairs

with multiple women

um, over a period of years.

[Evan] It was a lot. A lot, lot.

I think a lot of people

felt it was ironic.

The king of infidelity is cheating.

Not not a shock, but it went further.

From Noel.

[reads]

It goes to this page, Victoria's Escort.

[reads]

That's nice.

He was frequently contacting

escort agencies and this and that.

[Claire] From Emma S.

"Tell me what you're looking for

in a sugar baby."

E-mail chain with Santiago Escorts.

Noel [reads]

It's upsetting to read.

Uh, it's upsetting to imagine his wife

finding out about that in the media.

- What if your husband cheated on you?

- I'd be devastated.

Truth be told, I would be devastated.

[pleasant harp music plays]

[Evan] Noel had convinced her

to go on billboards around North America.

Taking her on The View,

saying, "Well, we have a great marriage,

and we don't cheat."

And, uh, and it was all false.

And I just felt devastated for her

and his kids.

[rhythmic foreboding music plays]

[Joseph] With this second dump,

the hackers post this message saying,

"Noel, you can admit this is real now."

Taunting and intimidating him.

Seeing that message

showed me just how intimately linked

these hackers somehow were to this target.

They're not just targeting the company,

they're targeting the CEO.

[André] Noel was, for me, a suspect

until they released his e-mails.

Because there was no point for him

to release his own personal e-mails.

So that was the end of that.

[Evan] They actually had

a personal vendetta against Noel.

They knew

that it would f*ck Noel up big-time.

And they had a hate on for him,

and they wanted him to suffer,

and he did suffer.

[suspenseful music plays]

[Sam] I'm driving in the car.

You know, Nia beside me.

I don't wanna look at Nia.

I gotta tell Nia more than what she knows,

and I was trying so hard

to find the strength.

He was kind of nervous.

I could see this about him.

My vision was really blurry,

tryin' to s see the road.

It just started coming out, man,

all the all the betrayals

from the very beginning.

Massage parlors, strip clubs,

those were easy access to that

To that pleasure that I wanted more of.

And I thought having that extra sex

outside of marriage would be exciting.

[Nia] There was just this shock.

He just proceeded for the next,

I mean, few hours

to tell me

years of betrayals

that he had acted out in our marriage.

It was it was like hell.

[Sam] I was flirting with various people

that were kind of acquaintances to us.

Two emotional relationships that I had.

I was cheating on my wife

with these people.

[Nia] The emotional betrayals,

those were really hard on me

because love is so important to me.

I did come on to a couple of her friends

who didn't reciprocate.

[Nia] He had pursued somebody

that was special to me,

and she just kind of

cut herself out of my life.

I lost this very close friend

because of you.

Um, it was a lot to face in a moment.

I started reeling inside.

Samuel!

I felt like

literally my world was, like, crumbling.

[Sam] She's pregnant.

[Nia] Every single aspect of my life

up into this point felt like a lie.

- [Sam] Thank you, sweetie. I love you.

- I know.

Everything that we have dreamed about.

[both laugh]

All of these very special

Our wedding day.

The day we met.

These moments that felt like

- Love you.

- I love you too.

[Nia]time stood still for us.

Suddenly it was just

over.

[anxious music plays]

[André] After the Impact

released the internal e-mails

from Noel and the company,

then at that point

our internal investigation stopped.

So from the company's perspective,

our services was not required anymore.

I was quite disappointed

that we didn't really get anywhere

with nailing down a potential suspect.

So we have a limited set of options

to work with there.

So we need the police.

[Bryce] The cyber team from Europe,

their focus was the damage control

more than anything.

The police investigation

was a criminal investigation

because of the extortion that came along.

And as a result

of the data bein' released,

people were takin' their lives.

So the Toronto Police Service

took the decision

to have a press conference.

I am well aware

that the Impact Team hackers

will be takin' an interest

in this media conference.

Therefore, I'm going to direct

these comments to them.

Team Impact,

I want to make it very clear to you.

Your actions are ill*gal

and we will not be tolerated.

This is your wake-up call.

Got a phone call that morning

from Ashley Madison.

They offered a half a million dollars

for a re a reward.

[intense rhythmic music plays]

Today, I can confirm that Avid Life Media

is offering a $500,000 reward

to anyone providing information

that leads the identification, arrest,

and prosecution of the person or persons

responsible for the leak

of the Ashley Madison database.

When you look at most police rewards

or rewards that come out,

ya know, they're like 25,000, 50,000.

But when you drop

half a million dollars on the table,

that speaks volumes.

Money always talks.

[mysterious music plays]

[Joseph] Nothing was known

about the Impact Team.

I specialize in speaking

to cybercriminals and hackers,

and I've never heard of these guys before.

I don't think any journalists have.

I was determined

to try to get ahold of them.

People's lives were literally at risk now.

I wanted to pull back the mask

to understand why they're doing this.

There are few ways

to get a hacker to speak to you.

You don't just send them a normal e-mail.

You don't ask them for a phone number

to call them on a normal cell phone.

They won't do that.

These are people who are wanted by,

sometimes, federal law enforcement

from multiple different countries.

I'm on the dark web,

and I'd come across somebody

who was speaking in quite specific detail

about the hack and about the Impact Team.

So I reach out to them.

Sure enough, they agree

to pass over a message to the Impact Team.

[message tone]

There was every chance they were

just gonna tell me to f*ck off.

There was such a firestorm

around this hack.

Yet nobody had spoken to the Impact Team.

If I could get them to talk to me,

it would be huge.

[message tone]

I get an e-mail.

It looks like it's from the Impact Team.

I can't quite believe that this is them.

[reads messages]

I think it was clear from the answers

that they're sticking to their g*ns.

"The site is misleading users,

we're trying to expose that."

[anxious violin music plays]

[mouse clicks]

So I started going through

the second data dump,

looking at Noel's e-mails,

corporate records.

I wanted to find out

if the Impact Team's claims about fraud

was actually true or not.

It became clear

security seemed like an afterthought.

Discussions that had

a lot more effort put into them

were more about branding, about PR,

about spin.

[Evan] We had all kinds of medals

on our website

which gave the impression

that, like, we were rock-solid, airtight.

[Claire] There is a little

gold medallion that said

"trusted security award."

Turned out to have been totally made up.

Somebody at the site must have made it

using Photoshop or something like that.

[Evan] The medals, that's embarrassing.

It's, uh

Yeah.

It's complete misrepresentation.

It just shows

how sloppy Ashley Madison was.

[man] This hacking group says

those customers who paid the fee

to have their information deleted

were lied to,

and the company

had secretly retained records,

including their credit-card information.

[Joseph] Ashley Madison advertised

this extra paid-for feature

where if you gave the company more money,

they promised

to completely wipe your account.

There would be no evidence

you ever used Ashley Madison.

[Evan] We would charge 20 bucks

to customers

to permanently delete any record of them

ever being members of Ashley Madison.

I thought the paid delete,

in the beginning, was a great idea.

Well, that brought in a lot of money.

Like a couple million dollars

in a very short period of time.

What I didn't know was that

we were charging, but we weren't doing it.

There was no paid delete.

Nothing was getting deleted.

[jazzy music plays]

[Joseph] Full delete not working

as advertised.

Yes, malicious and sketchy.

[Evan] Do I wish I had asked

more questions?

Sure.

But it wouldn't even

cross my mind to think,

"Oh, are you actually deleting it?"

[Joseph] If you promise users

that you delete their information,

you should absolutely do that.

If you charge more money

to then delete that information as well,

obviously you should be doing that

because it's a paid service.

Ashley Madison were ripping off customers,

and so I just kept digging.

And I started to realize

a lot more was gonna come out.

[dance music plays]

[Michelle] After Ashley Madison,

my life just went on.

I was just a stripper

working in the nightclubs and stuff.

One night I was working at the strip club,

and this guy just pops in with flowers,

and he comes up to talk to me.

He was looking at me like he knew me,

like I'm supposed to know him,

and I didn't know who he was.

I just thought this guy was a fan,

and he figured out where I worked,

and he came in there to meet me.

So the second time it happened,

it was, like, maybe a few weeks later.

Okay, this is the second guy

that's come up to me.

And he was like he was my boyfriend,

like he was just popping in at work

to see me.

Like, what is going on?

Then I asked the guy,

I'm like, "Hey, can you remind me

how I know you?"

"Do I know you from the club? How?"

He's like, "Well, we talk on the website."

"What are you talking about?"

He's like, "Ashley Madison."

I just looked at him,

I'm like, "I'm not on the website."

"I I don't talk to anybody on there

and that's not me."

And just the look of just, like

It just washed over him,

like he was scammed.

[anxious violin music plays]

"That's really not you I'm talking to."

I'm like, "I swear to you, it's not me."

Then a couple weeks later

the third guy came in.

It was just like,

"I'm not on Ashley Madison."

"That was not me you're talking to,

I am so sorry," and it just all clicks.

Something that was really

kind of driven in hard

was that I created a profile

on Ashley Madison.

Didn't think anything of it at the time.

I put my picture on there,

it's from my e-mail address.

These guys have not only

seen my profile on Ashley Madison,

but actually think they're talking to me.

There's somebody pretending they're me

on that website.

Is it mostly men looking

to have an affair, or do women as well?

Absolutely not.

That's why it's called Ashley Madison.

That's why our marketing

is geared towards a lot of women,

because you're seeing a change.

You're seeing a changing tide.

Women are behaving more and more like men.

[Claire] The company was always saying,

"We have so many women on our site,

our ratio of women to men is amazing."

[Noel] Infidelity's on the rise

for females,

but they don't equal men.

It's still about 40% female,

60% male in most regions.

[intriguing music plays]

[Claire] Did we question

how many women were on the site?

I think probably

we all could've questioned a bit more

whether some of these claims

were too good to be true.

[woman] A lot of men may have been exposed

at the very least as wannabe cheaters

as a result of the Ashley Madison hack.

What about the women?

It turns out

that Ashley Madison's members,

as many people suspected,

were not just overwhelmingly male,

but the women in many cases

may simply have not existed.

[Claire] One of the most compelling

pieces of evidence

that these were fake profiles

is that they were all

coming from the same IP address,

from the Ashley Madison office.

Either tens of thousands of women

were coming to the Ashley Madison office

to look for men to find affairs with,

or somebody in the office

was creating these fake profiles.

We knew there were

fake profiles on the site.

It wasn't a secret to us.

We were given profiles that were empty,

with photos.

We just had to finish

filling out their profile content.

We kinda had a sense of what

people were looking for and what was

um, you know, sexually attractive to men.

[pictures click]

[Claire] Who's out there

looking at these women?

Men, right? [laughs]

"I wanna go to this site

that's full of all these women

who are eagerly waiting

for a guy like me to have an affair with."

"Let me bust out my credit card"

[laughs] "and give you all my money."

[picture clicks]

[Noel] We are 100% committed

to an organic community.

There is no communication, zero,

you'll ever have on Ashley Madison

with another member,

that isn't anything other than organic,

and by "organic," we mean true and real.

Hundred percent legitimate.

There's a big gap

between what Noel would say

[picture clicks]

and, ya know, the things

that the site actually did in practice.

[man] Gizmodo's Annalee Newitz dug deeper,

looking at who the men

were actually meeting online.

I think most of them were probably

either talking to Ashley Madison employees

or just interacting

with automated bots on the site

that were sending them automatic mail.

[Cathy reads]

"I'm bored at work.

Up for some sexy chat? XO."

The robots, the bots,

we knew they were there.

They were there

to engage with our male profiles.

[Joseph] When the second data dump

came out,

it became clear that Ashley Madison

was using fake profiles

to actually communicate with its users.

When some users would message

who they thought was a human,

they were actually speaking to bots.

[Evan] There's a difference

between bots and fake profiles.

A bot is also a fake profile,

but it's hooked up

to some artificial intelligence,

and the bot would send the first e-mail.

And I was told that is basically

because most of the men

that joined the site

are reluctant and shy,

but they will reply to to a message.

The members don't know

that this bot is is not a real person

or that this bot is busy sending

10,000 messages that day,

and then, ya know, getting 10,000 replies.

[Joseph] Men had to pay money

to then read these messages

and engage with these accounts.

I mean, that shows predatory behavior

from Ashley Madison.

Not only are you getting people to sign up

and misleading them,

you're then charging them

for the privilege of being lied to.

[Claire] The bot profile lines

read like a male fantasy

of how you would want

the women on the site to talk to you.

Women were the product,

but mostly the fantasy

of the idea of women was the product.

An average male user of Ashley Madison

was talking into the void

[giggles]to these fake bots,

racking up hundreds of dollars worth

of credit-card bills

and risking his marriage to do it.

It paints a pretty sad picture.

[rhythmic singing plays]

[Evan] I think during that period of time

after the second release

of hacked information,

it was exhausting.

I wanted to get into bed

and pull the sheets over my head,

and put on The Golden Girls.

[types at computer]

And I remember thinking,

"What else is Am I gonna find out?"

[Cathy] There was a general meeting

for the whole company.

Someone from the board had come in

to let us know that

there was gonna be replacements.

And there was.

[Evan] The board said

Noel would no longer be coming back.

Well, I was surprised,

'cause I didn't know.

And that was it. It was quick.

The Impact Team got what they wanted.

They released all the information.

Cost millions.

They cut off Ashley Madison at the knees.

And then you've got

the scumbag king of infidelity,

'cause that's what he became,

CEO of Ashley Madison

who's completely disgraced.

[Cathy] He was blamed for everything.

I kind of felt for him

because he took the fall.

I think that he felt that day

that he had hit rock bottom.

Noel leaving,

this is completely catastrophic.

At that point, we didn't know

if Ashley Madison would survive.

[Evan] Nobody else knows this business

better than him.

sh*t, that guy built this company.

We're f*cked.

We mutually decided that Sam would stay

somewhere else for a period of time.

We just said, "For now."

[rhythmic music plays]

I needed space.

I just couldn't be

in the same room with him.

That was hard,

to to leave my kids

and to think that

that may be my new way of life.

We had to take our daughter

to her first day of kindergarten,

and we're both there

taking pictures separately,

and being there and seeing

what their lives will look like

completely without me.

And that was really hard.

[kids laughing]

It was all so painful to watch.

Just seeing the destruction

of what I'd I'd chosen to do.

[Nia] I told him he's just like every man

that I was trying to avoid.

Like, what was the point

of trying to find a Christian man?

Something that I've had to wrestle with

was just that I'm not enough for him.

This relationship,

none of it has ever been enough. Like

And I I worked so hard

to be what I thought he wanted.

[gentle piano music plays]

[Sam] I wasn't gonna give up.

I was gonna do whatever it took,

and fight tooth and nail

for this marriage.

I expressed my remorse

and my regret day after day.

Every single day

confessing how much I I love her.

I wanted it to work so badly.

In order to really even take

one tiny, mini baby step forward,

it would require us to

to really sit down

and have some really hard,

deep conversations

to find out what was real

and what was not real.

But I didn't really wanna fix it.

I did not want to reconcile.

At that point, I felt like it was over.

[anxious rhythmic music plays]

[Bryce] With the press conference,

I thought we were gonna get a lot of calls

and we didn't.

I was totally surprised.

Half a million dollars

in someone's pocket would be very nice,

but there was nothing, not even a bite.

Not even a Crime Stoppers tip about it

or nothing.

The hackers, well,

they call themselves the Impact Team.

I personally think that, uh,

"team" was an exaggeration.

That was probably one person.

Uh, and the reason being for that,

'cause when there was the $500,000 reward.

Usually when you have a team,

somebody breaks from the team,

and the money becomes more important.

[Joseph] Haven't heard anything

about Impact Team before or since.

It's incredibly unusual

for a hacking group to materialize,

do one job, and then disappear.

I can't think of another case

where that happened.

The Impact Team was just a creation

for this communication.

I think it was never

a real team behind that.

There were a lot of clues that

were leading us to believe

that it was an insider.

[Claire] The Impact Team named a number

of, ya know, high-ranking executives

in some of the communications

they put out.

Ya know, why would they know

those people's names

unless they had some

sort of personal or work connection?

I don't think anybody

ever got particularly close

to figuring out who did it.

[Bryce] The investigation, you know

Eventually the task force was shut down

because there's no new leads.

There was nothin'.

No evidence or any information

received by any law-enforcement group

who was involved

in the Ashley Madison hack.

Nobody has identified

anyone from the Impact Team.

[Claire] Speculating about

who might've done it

is part of the fun of this story.

It's a giant whodunit.

Everyone on the planet

had a motive to take Ashley Madison down.

[foreboding music plays]

[woman] As of this morning

at least eight people

in the US are suing the site,

saying Ashley Madison

failed to take, quote,

"Reasonable steps

to protect the security of its users."

They actually didn't follow through

on what their promises were,

and I'm glad that hopefully some people

will get some justice in this case.

[Joseph] After the hack,

disgruntled users of the site

did file a class-action lawsuit.

Ashley Madison

had to pay users $11 million.

That doesn't remove their data

from the Internet.

[anxious rhythmic music plays]

People k*lled themselves

over this data breach.

I absolutely think the Impact

is at least partly to blame

for the suicide of anybody

who was in that dump.

The Impact Team took a decision

to release that information,

and they are responsible

for all of the consequences

that come from that,

as well as Ashley Madison.

[Claire] Everyone was saying

this company is done.

Why would anyone

ever sign up for the site again?

Its reputation has been, ya know, slammed

on every country around the world.

I did not see

how it could come back from this.

[pleasant guitar music plays]

[Sam] Eventually, Nia agreed

to do marital counseling with me.

So we sit down

with my pastor and his wife.

I really wanted to, like, hear somebody,

like, lay into him,

and someone to, like, be on my side.

[Bo] It was very difficult

and very emotional,

and she was very honest

in those early, uh, meetings.

She said, "I don't know what will happen,

if this is repairable."

I think it was very good for him

to feel the weight of what he had done

and feeling the true threat

of losing everything he loved most.

He was able to begin really dealing

with the depths that he had gone to,

and the dark places that he had traveled.

[Sam] I started to really think

about selfish decisions I made.

Lookin' back,

I realized it was all about me.

I'm not thinkin' about Nia.

That was not how I was gonna live anymore.

I was just hoping she would see

that this wasn't just a confessional,

that this was a a repentance.

It was a turnaround,

it was a complete change.

[Nia] Seeing all the responsibility

Sam took for everything he had done,

the hours of of counseling

and conversation that he sat through,

no matter how mad I was

at what he had done,

I could still see this shift

that happened in him.

Yes, the betrayals were out,

but so was the real Sam.

Like, "This is me and all my flaws too."

It's heartbreaking

to love someone so much,

to the point where, like, you don't know

if it's good for you anymore or not,

and you have

I had to sit down and find out.

[gentle piano music plays]

You look good.

Trust me, babe, we'll get there.

- That's good.

- Can see it.

- That's good.

- Yeah.

[Sam] Nia, she decided

she would give me a second chance.

Falling deeply in love is beautiful.

But I've learned continuing

to be deeply in love takes work.

There's a lot of things

I really do regret,

but I don't regret, you know, the hack.

It had to happen for where we're at today.

What Sam did and what we walked through

has left a mark.

It's left a permanent mark,

but I'm thankful for it.

It's kind of like a starting point for us

on how we'll live

the rest of our marriage.

[cheerful music plays]

[Marc] I think

cheating is a natural human way

to just find excitement

or find somethin' else

to tolerate the life

you have given yourself

without destroying your foundation.

It's just a shame that the couples

can't talk to each other about it.

[Michelle] I believe you should be honest

with your partner

and obviously be upfront.

If two people wanna have an open marriage

and both want

to go outside of marriage for something,

more power to 'em.

But when one person's going

behind the other person's back,

sneaking and going on dating apps,

that's definitely gonna cause a problem

in the relationship.

[Christi] What we wanna do

in this culture today,

is somebody makes one mistake

or says one thing,

and we wanna write them off.

The people who were poring over that list

in the Ashley Madison leak,

the witch hunt,

there's just a self-righteousness in that.

But the truth is

we all have a list that we're on

that is something that we're not proud of,

that is our secret.

[dark singing music plays]

People wanna know what's going on

in everyone else's sex life. [laughs]

I think it's that simple.

You wanna know

if your neighbor's having an affair,

you wanna know if your favorite celebrity

is having an affair,

or you wanna know

what politicians are doing in the bedroom.

This whole story is so incredible.

If somebody wrote it as a fictional novel,

you'd say it's too incredible to believe.

[dark singing music crescendoes]

[producer] How do you guys feel

about the fact

that Ashley Madison

is actually still going?

Oh it is still going?

I didn't realize that.

I didn't realize

Ashley Madison was still going.

It's an evil on a whole different level,

in my opinion.

[rhythmic music plays]

[Evan] The hack was 2015.

I left in 2017.

It just became a corporate place to work.

It was not the same and very boring.

It doesn't surprise me

that it's still around today.

For me, I don't judge.

I understand that people think,

"I only have one life to live,

and I'm happy with my wife,

but I also wanna f*ck that 23-year-old."

I get it.

Sometimes I see some hotties

and I'd be like, "That would be fun."

But I think your sex is just better

if it's built on something

that means something.

Ashley Madison taught me

that there will always

be people who cheat.

I always say that

as long as men have penises,

Ashley Madison will always be in business.

[laughs]

[upbeat music plays]