If one types “Ashley Madison excuses” into Google, plenty of jokes will arise. There’s the Conan O’Brien bit about Ashley Madison excuses from CONAN on TBS , however, plenty of folks who find their names on the leaked list are doing anything but laughing. Those people tend to find themselves in the position of having to defend or explain why their names appear on the list — if not to the general public, at least to their significant others.
Some of the top reasons or excuses — be they real or fake, valid, or just an excuse — for names appearing on the Ashley Madison list have cropped up repeatedly over the past few days.
The first reason certain people claim their names were found on the Ashley Madison list is that someone entered an email not their own. A big wig says it happened to her, as reported by the Daily Mail . This is also what Evan Ratliff says happened to him, and he offers overwhelming proof that it wasn’t him who entered his own email when signing up. Before eschewing this first seemingly most-popular excuse, note that Ashley Madison didn’t require users to validate their email addresses prior to creating accounts, so folks with easy-to-emulate email addresses have discovered that other people have used their popular email addresses to sign up for such sites.
They were just looking around. That’s the third reason some Ashley Madison users have admitted to joining the site, but saying they didn’t go further and actually met someone for an affair. Sam of Sam and Nia YouTube fame said that was his motive.
Doing research on the Ashley Madison website was another excuse. A GOP leader says Ashley Madison was his opposition research playground, reports People Magazine ?. Previously, however, reporters have used Ashley Madison for research — however, journalists like Charles Orlando told his wife first about his journalistic endeavors prior to joining Ashley Madison.
It was years ago. That’s one of the other top refrains heard from Ashley Madison users. Indeed, certain people used the site prior to even meeting their significant others, and as long as the dates of joining or payment dates coincide with that fact, they are in the clear. If the dates of the Ashley Madison transactions fall within a time period where the user was expected to be faithful, that could represent a problem with that excuse.
Of all the excuses, CNN asks if Ashley Madison is to blame, or its customers .
[Image via Ashley Madison]
