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The FTC is investigating Ashley Madison

The FTC is investigating Ashley Madison

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Nearly one year after a security breach resulted in the leak of a massive amount of customer data, Ashley Madison is now being investigated by the US Federal Trade Commission. The company's new top executives — replacing those who exited after the tumultuous hack — confirmed the inquiry in an interview with Reuters. CEO Rob Segal isn't exactly sure what the FTC is focusing its probe on, but the leading theory is that it's tied to the website's use of "fembots" to artificially balance the male/female ratio. "That's a part of the ongoing process that we're going through," he told Reuters. "It's with the FTC right now."

A report commissioned by Ashley Madison parent company Avid Life Media confirmed that the infidelity website impersonated real women with the fembots, which continued to chat up some customers into 2015 — despite claims that the bogus profiles were mostly shut down in 2014.

The company's new leadership expressed "profound" sorrow over last year's breach, acknowledging that the infidelity website could have done more to improve its lackluster approach to security and better shield the personal details covering millions of users that flooded the dark web last August. Since then, some Ashley Madison customers have faced blackmail threats, and Avid Life Media has been hit with multiple class action lawsuits. The company recruited cyber security experts from Deloitte to come in and "reinvent" its security protocols to lessen the odds of a repeat incident.

Segal, the new CEO, insists that the website can recover, though it might require pivoting away from Ashley Madison's heavy focus on being a discreet gateway to affairs . "We certainly feel that the Ashley Madison brand can be repositioned," he said, adding that customers can expect to see "a vastly different approach to how she is marketed."

Despite the sizable reward being offered for information on the perpetrators, Ashley Madison's hackers haven't yet been charged or even identified.