Toronto has highest number of Ashley Madison clients in Canada, 4th in world

TORONTO – As more information about the Ashley Madison data leak comes to light, men in Toronto – in particular – remain anxious.

That’s because according to online infographic site dadaviz, Torontonians make up just under 223,000 of the site’s clients, the fourth-highest total of all cities in the world.

Halifax didn’t even crack the top 25.

Avid Life Media, the company that owns Ashley Madison, confirmed today that some of the client data released online yesterday by hackers is legitimate. The hackers say they released the data because Avid Life has refused to shut down both Ashley Madison and another site called Established Men. The group says the sites do not permanently delete personal information when accounts are closed.

Avid Life Media is a Toronto-based company that operates globally, which may be why it comes as no surprise that Torontonians make up such a large number of the company’s clientele. According to dadaviz, only Sao Paulo, New York City and Sydney, Australia have more clients than Toronto.

Dadaviz also managed to create a composite sketch of the average Ashley Madison user: He is a non-smoker with an average build, black hair and brown eyes.

According to Avid Life spokesman Paul Keable, some of the data released by hackers is real, but does not include users’ credit card numbers. The information has been leaked to the Deep Web, a hidden area of the Internet not indexed by standard search engines.

But by Wednesday morning, the information was popping up in more accessible places, including at least one website that allowed users to search the data by phone number or email address.

“There has been a substantial amount of postings since the initial posting, the vast majority of which have contained data unrelated to AshleyMadison.com but there has also been some data released that is legitimate,” Keable said in a release. “Furthermore, we can confirm that we do not – nor ever have – store credit card information on our servers.”

More than 170 addresses associated with the Canadian Armed Forces are on the list, and hundreds more from other departments and agencies, including justice, public works, the Canada Revenue Agency and the RCMP.

At least one MP was registered by name. Several email addresses attached to the Senate were registered although not under any sitting senators’ names.

There were also municipal government email addresses on the list, including 78 in Toronto, 41 in Ottawa and 32 in Calgary. Dozens of university email addresses are also included.

With files the The Associated Press