Ashley Madison Hack Reveals Infidelity Thrives In Canada And Ireland

Ashley Madison’s secrets have been pouring out all week. The online cheating website has been hacked by a group of anonymous hackers who reportedly leaked names, sexual fantasies, and personal financial information of the cheating spouses. Now more details about Ashley Madison are being revealed.

The Ashley Madison hack is teaching people about the infidelity rates in both Canada and Ireland. According to a recent article on the Daily Mail, Canada’s capital city of Ottawa has over 200,000 residents registered on the online cheating website.

Ottawa’s total number of residents is 883,000, which means that more than 20 percent of the city’s population is cheating on their spouses. Or, were cheating on their spouses. Ashley Madison claims to have 37 million registered users on its website.

According to another report via Reuters, Ottawa’s rate of unfaithful spouses is the highest number per capita in Canada and the highest rate globally. It’s not entirely surprising, though, since Ashley Madison is based out of Canada.

Reuters spoke to Ottawa’s residents about the stats.

A municipal employee joked, “I think a lot of people will be questioned tonight at dinner.”

Another remarked, “Everybody says Ottawa is a sleepy town and here we are with 200,000 people running around on each other.”

It looks like infidelity is bringing thriving business to Ottawa. This is good news for business people like John Sullivan who runs the Triangle Investigation Agency, a team of private investigators often hired for this specific reason.

“Business is wonderful. It hasn’t been better in the 33 years Triangle has been around. If you suspect your spouse is cheating, then you hire Triangle and we go out and prove it. We prove the adultery situation, or even if they are just seeing someone or having dinner with someone. We prove that type of thing.”

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, there are more than 2,600 cheating spouses who could be exposed by the Ashley Madison hacking. There are at least 1.2 million members who are from the U.K. It’s also been revealed that 2,450 married men and 190 married women are on the online cheating site.

Ashley Madison isn’t the only place online where infidelity lurks. A staggering number of people often cheat on social media. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers reported that 81 percent of lawyers claim that their clients use information from Facebook (such as direct messages) in divorce court cases.

Caitlyn Dewey reported in the Washington Post that some people use social networking sites like Facebook to keep some relationships on the “backburner.” That means they will turn to other romantic interests if their current relationship ends. According to Dewey, this turns into “remote infidelity” or emotional cheating that develops over social media and smartphones.

“At some level, this idea of ‘digital cheating’ or ‘remote infidelity’ is just a very old concept in new, trendy clothes. Emotional infidelity, a sort of destructive, unconsummated affair, went down in bars and over cubicle walls long before we had Gchat records of it. To some extent, the Internet has only made these things more visible, better-documented: There are finally texts and emails to back up our suspicions.”

It’s important to note that websites like Ashley Madison aren’t completely to blame for infidelity. Social media and public websites are also other ways of starting affairs. Are you surprised by the infidelity rates on sites like Ashley Madison or Facebook, or in Canada and Ireland? Share your thoughts below in the comments section.

[Image: Ashley Madison]