1 Dangerous UX Flaw Ashley Madison Needlessly Exposes Users To
This one can get people in trouble
I make a lot of money helping men use Ashley Madison to find the side piece of their dreams. In doing that, I’ve become an expert user, which is another reason to spend money on me. I’ve blogged about the platform and written user guides to help men, but no matter how often I see this UX (user experience) flaw trap users, it still pisses me off.
Let me explain what Ashley Madison does, how to spot it, and how to avoid it.
What is it?
Ashley Madison auto-sets all uploaded pics to public access and requires the user to change it if they don’t want their pictures in the public domain. If I need to explain why you don’t want a public photo of yourself on a cheating site, adultery probably isn’t a hobby for you.
Picture feature on Ashley Madison
There are two categories of pics users can select on Ashley Madison. Those are —
- Public — meaning anyone on the site can see it, and Ashley Madison recommends everyone having at least one public photo for a better experience, as you can see in the photo below.
- Private —so only people you share it with can see them.
Private pics are further categorized
When you add private pics, Ashley Madison evaluates them and categorizes the more revealing ones as explicit. This is, so they won’t automatically appear, even when a user shares their pics with someone. Users cannot set their own explicit photos.
Ashley Madison does this because it gives users an option not to see explicit photos. It's likely designed to allow women to see fewer dic pics, but men can use this setting. This option is found in settings.
Ashley Madison gives private pictures a lock icon in the top right, and explicit photos an eye with a line through it.
So what’s the dangerous flaw?
When you add a photo, as I have below using my own account and a painting of Jane Austin, you can see that the category is already set as Public.
This happens automatically.
The problem is, once uploaded, the image will be available for public viewing if I don’t switch to private.
How it affects users
I received this email from a client recently. We were going back and forth about picture strategies around sharing. He’d also asked if a new picture he had was good enough for his profile. I told him it was, and he uploaded it.
Several hours later, he sent me this email, writing, I also realized I had the last pic I uploaded marked as public for a couple of hours. I’m ruined. Lol.
Can you imagine? He caught it, so no further harm was done, but that doesn’t mean harm wasn’t done.
I talk about OPSEC or operational security for cheaters, I talk about how a small oversight like this can lead to a massive disaster.
Waiting for Jane to be published
So there Jane is below, waiting patiently next to some pictures of my goodies. When it’s awaiting publishing, as indicated by the clock icon in the top right of the pic, you don’t know if the picture is public, private, or explicit.
This is entirely preventable
All Ashley Madison would have to do is set the Private button as the default. Ashley Madison ought to know this will likely happen and should support their clients’ privacy better.
The consequences of making a public picture private are zero, but the reverse? It could be disastrous.
What is frustrating is that this is entirely within Ashley Madison’s ability to control.
Takeaway
It was my recent client email that motivated me to write this article. I know this happens, and I should have warned him. But there are so many things to take care of when preparing a client for his search; this one escaped my attention — and look, what happened?
There are women on the site who do this too. You often see women new to the site who have their faces public without knowing it because they didn’t notice how the buttons were set. It boggles my mind that Ashley Madison UX designers would allow this.
We all know that the site had a massive privacy breach in 2015, and they have taken great steps to protect their client’s data, so why wouldn’t they do the same to prevent this?
Can you imagine discovering you’ve put your face out there like that? It could be a life-changing mistake.
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© Teresa J. Conway, 2023
