... comes from Dan Loeb of Third Point, who as Gawker [3]points out admits to being a member of the hacked cheating website: due diligence.
To wit:
“As my family, friends and business colleagues know, I am a prolific web surfer. Did I visit this site to see what it was all about? Absolutely – years ago, at the time I was invested in Yahoo and IAC and was endlessly curious about apps and websites. Did I ever engage or meet with anyone through this site? Never. That was never my intention — as evidenced by the fact that I never provided a credit card to set up an account.”
Indeed, as the author points out, this is an "entirely plausible excuse for being on Ashley Madison" especially for someone who was financially affiliated with comparable websites. In fact, for anyone on Wall Street caught on Ashley Madison and having to explain to their significant other why they were on (a website where some 95% of the members were many to begin with) the explanation is all too simple: to test out the platform and its profitability ahead of their imminent (and now permanently scrapped) IPO. Period, end of story.
Unless the story doesn't end there, like in this case: "it doesn’t explain why someone who had no intention of engaging with other adulterers described himself as looking for “discreet fun with 9 or 10,” as indicated in his profile data.
I asked Loeb why he’d entered his desire for “discreet fun” into a website he had no intention of using. He replied: “That field was part of going on the site and I gave a brief line that sounded plausible.”
Loeb’s statement also doesn’t explain why he checked his private messages on an account he never used to “engage” with anyone. The profile data shows that the last time he did so was on December 9, 2013—eight months after he joined Ashley Madison.
Here is what a better explanation may have sounded like: "I am a billionaire: does it look like I need to secretly hook up on an anonymous website when I can go out and have any woman I want?"
