Noel Biderman, CEO of Ashley Madison Parent Company, Steps Down

CYBERSPACE—Amid the news pieces of a security breach, a data dump of hacked info on the Dark Web and reports that the vast, vast majority of the female profiles were fake, Noel Biderman—CEO of Avid Life Media, the parent company of AshleyMadison.com—is stepping down. A statement on the website, which boasted the tagline “Life is short. Have an affair,” reads: “This change is in the best interest of the company and allows us to continue to provide support to our members and dedicated employees. We are steadfast in our commitment to our customer base. We are actively adjusting to the attack on our business and members’ privacy by criminals.” Biderman has not released any personal statement about his resignation, nor has he released any statement on the hacking of the site and the release of customers’ personal information. The data dump, which happened earlier this month, became fodder for various news outlets reporting everything from "family values" conservative Josh Duggar’s accounts on the site to the suicides of ordinary citizens who were allegedly members at some point. AVN Senior Editor Mark Kernes detailed much of the fallout in his op-ed piece published this week. Neither Avid Life Media nor Biderman make note of the exact reason(s) for his resignation in the statement on the site, but it comes on the heels of a third release of data from the hackers, this time containing email from Biderman’s personal Gmail account. The second data dump included emails from what appeared to be Biderman’s work email address. It’s virtually impossible to know if the resignation is over the actual data breach, the discovery that customers who paid about $20 to have their info removed from the site still had their information show up in the data dump, the recent reports from sites like Gizmodo.com which analyzed the data and found out that not only were the majority of the profiles males, but that the majority of the female profiles were fake, or any number of tragic stories about customers who lives have been ruined or ended because of the debacle. Regardless, according to the remaining management at Avid Life Media, "We are steadfast in our commitment to our customer base. … We will continue to provide access to our unique platforms for our worldwide members.”