Thirty-nine-year-old Amanda Biderman is happily married. She and her husband Noel have been in a successful, monogamous relationship for over a decade. The South African woman describes her partner as a "charismatic entrepreneur". According to the mother of his two children, Noel is anything but a "smooth womaniser".
Or so she thought.
The recent furore over the leaked data from infidelity Web site Ashley Madison has not only exposed the sneaky dalliances of many of the platform's users but it has also shone the spotlight on Mr Ashley Madison himself ? founder, CEO and Amanda's supposedly faithful husband, Noel Biderman.
While Mr Biderman's position at the helm of the globe's largest online dating service for married people looking to have "discreet affairs" may not have been enough of a reason for Amanda to doubt her hubby's chastity, recent revelations about his after-hour activities just might do the trick. Thanks to a group of hackers called Impact Team, Noel's wife and the rest of the world are now able to view the not so innocent contents of his personal e-mails.
Once dubbing himself the "King of Infidelity", it would appear Biderman is just that. The e-mails reveal that from 2012 he has had several affairs. The correspondence details how he compensated women for their company and made arrangements to meet up with them in hotel rooms and coffee shops.
So he runs a platform to help people deceive their loved ones and appears to have used this very platform to cheat on his own wife - seems like a pretty awful chap, yes? Well yes, but I'm not convinced it's that simple.
A portrait of adultery
Biderman first came up with the idea to start Ashley Madison (a combination of two of the US's most popular female names at the time) while working as a sports attorney in 2001. As part of his job, he was often tasked with helping professional basketball players juggle their wives and mistresses. He did some research and learned that more than a quarter of the people with online dating profiles weren't actually single, and realising that he just may be on to something, a social network for married people looking to have affairs was born.
Over the years, he has worked with a professor of sociology at Canada's Winchester University to learn a thing or two about why, how and when people are most likely to cheat. In an interview last year, Biderman shared that the most popular times of the year for new signups are the days following big holidays such as Father's Day or New Year's Day, and outlined that Monday mornings prove to be the favoured day of the week to entertain adulterous ideas.
The reason being, according to Biderman, that these people were left unhappy because their partners may not have met their expectations for that specific holiday or weekend special event. In addition, he revealed it is usually within the first three to five years of a marriage that people start to consider looking to get their kicks elsewhere.
Once dubbing himself the "King of Infidelity", it would appear Biderman is just that.
The recent data breach has also revealed some scandalous titbits about Ashley Madison users. From a local perspective, there are roughly 175 000 South Africans using the extramarital affair service, but it is unclear how many of these had their data exposed.
Something I found particularly interesting was the fact that the number of male users grossly outnumbers that of female users but it would appear that most of the female profiles on the site are actually fake. Which may prove the claims made by a former Ashley Madison employee, who alleged she had been hired to create 1 000 profiles of "alluring females".
However, last month's invasion of users' privacy does not seem to have deterred cheaters. According to Avid Life Media, the owner of the Web site, the number of new signups since the security slip is in the "hundreds of thousands".
Before we all prepare to write slanderous comments about Biderman (who has subsequently resigned from his position) on online message boards, or defame his name on the toilet doors of nightclub restrooms, one should be mindful of the fact that he has always been pretty upfront about his stance on fidelity.
Yes, I will acknowledge that he claimed to have never cheated on his wife (naughty naughty) but he has also very openly admitted that were he and Amanda to have any intimacy issues, he would have no qualms about climbing into bed with someone else. "If I wanted to have an affair, I would have one," he said in an interview in 2014. So should we really be surprised that he hasn't been faithful?
And given the fact that Ashley Madison has over 30 million users, is it fair for us to call for Biderman's public crucifixion for tainting the sanctity of marriage when he is merely providing a service that it would appear, many people are quite interested in using?
As Amanda stressed in an interview last year, Noel is just in the business of making money. And apparently one can make millions by helping people stray. Bad boy or brilliant businessman? You decide.
* A former ITWeb journalist, Joanne Carew now resides in the Mother City, where she is admiring the mountain and completing her Masters studies at UCT.
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