To put it mildly, Ashley Madison is one of the most…bizarre dating sites.
Its whole premise is that life is short, and married people should consider meeting up and having secret affairs with other people—definitely NSFW.
A pretty scary concept, for sure; millions of people use Ashley Madison, and since the majority of them are in committed relationships, no one is safe!
Unfortunately, we’re well aware of how these online affairs affect relationships.
This site is discreet and unique, but like with everything else, some inconsistencies help us find people there.
And if you’re trying to find out if your spouse is on Ashley Madison or not, let me show you how!
What’s Ashley Madison all about?
“Life is short. Have an affair.” is what they say.
Yes, this dating app enables and even encourages extramarital affairs; it’s mainly used by people who want to cheat on their spouse, but not limited to!
Ashley Madison is also used for casual hookups as well as by people who aren’t married—however, the selling point is the affairs.
The sign-up process is fairly easy: you make your account, fill in the info, pick a username, and provide your email.
This app lets you specify your preferences regarding what you’re looking for (e.g. marital status, gender, appearance, etc).
Pretty generic stuff up until this point, but it’s time to get to the juicy stuff!
– Ashley Madison is completely free to use for women, whereas men have to pay!
It’s a female-friendly site! How considerate!
This app offers its female users a lot of perks and other unique features all for free—they can message and interact with people all they want.
On the other hand, men do not get the same advantages: they have to use Ashley Madison’s currency, called credits, to have a more enhanced experience.
With credits, they can initiate conversations, send gifts, and other features they wouldn’t be able to use for free.
– And to get even crazier, it masks itself from users’ devices.
One of the things that stands out the most to me is just how well it hides its users—in terms of the billing system, notification, or even the app itself.
While signing up, you can choose to not receive any notifications from the app at all, and if you do, you can change the notification to look unsuspicious.
To take it a step further, Ashley Madison allows users to change the app icon into something more-lowkey!
It even masks payments, meaning that if a person is using this service, it won’t say what they paid for—this doesn’t work for every bank.
Now that we’re familiar with this platform, let’s look at ways how you can see if your husband uses Ashley Madison:
1. A more tedious process, but creating a fake account will let you start browsing!
Create an account and see if you can manually find your husband.
Pick a unique username that does not correlate with your identity (if your husband is there, he might know it’s you), and fill in the other blanks.
Make the most out of your husband’s preferences: for example, if he has a specific type, build your profile based on it!
If you’re thinking of using a profile picture, I would recommend you either use a fake picture or a heavily-altered one of yours.
And since the app itself allows you to blur or somehow hide your profile image, consider using those features as having photos could help your search!
Just a quick tip! Create your Ashley Madison account under a fake email address so that it isn’t linked to you.
2. Look for your husband on Ashley Madison more effectively by filtering your searches.
When searching for a potential match, use Filters on the top right of the screen—it saves time!
With this feature, you can search for people based on their age, location, and distance.
Pick your husband’s age range, and if you believe that he wants to cheat nearby, shorten your preferred distance.
You can also provide more details about ‘your dream match’ by clicking on More—now you can give further details, such as:
- Preferred body type;
- Height;
- Spoken language;
- Ethnic background, etc.
If your husband is not attempting to catfish, then you will probably find him by using search filters!
Users were able to search people by nicknames before, but now that’s not possible—though this feature would’ve been of great help to us, the app has disabled it due to privacy reasons.
Well played, Ashley Madison…well played.
3. Or just ask your friend to help you!
Because Ashley Madison is really against fake pictures and fake identities, why not ask a friend for help?
But, it has to be a friend your partner has never seen!
You can do this in two ways:
a) If your friend already has an Ashley Madison account, you can ask them if they could help you look for your spouse, or;
b) Get their permission to use their pictures and other details.
Of course not a lot would agree, so I recommend asking a trusted friend who wouldn’t expose you.
If all things go according to plan, you can use search filters and other methods to see if your husband is truly cheating.
4. Give people-lookup services a try—they’ll tell you if your spouse uses Ashley Madison.
If you want to see if your husband is online cheating, specifically by using dating sites, then this method is for you!
There are third-party apps used to find people’s profiles—yes, even dating ones—based on their details.
For example, you can search by using their name, email, phone number, and more; people’s accounts relevant to your search will show up.
You might’ve also heard of popular third-party sites such as:
All you need to do is provide the necessary information and profiles linked to your husband’s identity will show up!
However, these services aren’t free: a fee or subscription is typically required.
5. You can also use spying apps to see what he’s doing on his phone.
There are spying apps you can use to see what he does online! And if he’s on Ashley Madison, you’ll know right away.
Spying apps are used to track a person’s devices (what they do, who they interact with, etc)—though they’re usually used to monitor children’s online activity, people also use them on their cheating spouses.
With such apps, you can get access to your husband’s
- Social apps (in this case, Ashley Madison);
- Texts;
- Calls;
- Browsing history;
- Location;
- Gallery, and many more data useful to uncover any unfaithfulness!
For this, you’ll need to have access to your husband’s phone to install and set up the spyware, don’t worry though, the app is invisible.
After that, follow the instructions and you’re all set.
Again, this method isn’t free, however, it’s very effective; you will be notified about what your husband looks at on his phone.
6. See if there have been any suspicious transactions on his bank statement.
Now, this is a bit tricky because as I said, Ashley Madison masks itself quite well in the billing process.
It uses a billing descriptor that helps hide what the payment was made for, but luckily for us, this doesn’t work for all banks.
Check your husband’s bank statement if possible—even though I doubt he’s paid using it, give your joint account a look too.
If it says that the payment has been made for Ashley Madison, then there you have it! He is using it, and I’m sure we can assume why.
Also, see if you can find something along the lines of “AMDA” or “AMDB” followed by a bunch of numbers.
That’s how an Ashley Madison billing typically shows up as.
7. Checking his devices will give you a great lead!
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that snooping around a partner’s devices is a successful method of exposing cheaters.
A bit morally questionable, but when being driven to a corner, we have no other choice left.
Checking your husband’s phone is also an option—an effective one—but know that it’s a bit risky!
Your partner might figure out that you’ve done this, and that’s not going to be healthy for your marriage, especially if issues were present, to begin with.
It’s important to know the proper ways to check a partner’s phone—what needs to be done.
And I’m about to show you just that!
8. Check his apps, all of them; users can change their Ashley Madison app icon.
The length this app is willing to go to just to make cheating accessible is truly astonishing.
Yes, Ashley Madison gives users different icons they can choose from to hide the fact they use it.
When going through your husband’s phone, make sure to thoroughly check all of his apps by going to Settings > Apps; there you’ll find a list of all his installed apps, even the hidden ones.
Here are some options AM gives users for the app icon—if you see any of these, know that your husband does in fact use it:
When checking his apps and coming across one you don’t recognize, click on it! Chances are it’s the Ashley Madison app.
9. Keep an eye out for unusual notifications and click on them if you see any.
This app doesn’t just straight-up send notifications telling you that an opportunity to cheat on your spouse has come along!
AM notifications are very vague, and they become even more complicated when you find out that users can customize them.
Yes, users can customize how the notifications look on their phones!
For example, if your husband is using this stealth feature, he can make his notifications say, “Daily reminder: your wife is the most amazing woman in the world!” when in reality he’s receiving a nude.
If you get the opportunity and your husband isn’t present, go through his phone and click on the notification.
If it is Ashley Madison in disguise, it will take you straight to the app and you’ll be able to see what your husband is doing.
10. Check his browsing history on both his phone and PC.
Again, I doubt he’d make the mistake of not deleting it, but it’s worth a shot.
On his mobile device and PC, go to History on the browser and scroll down until you find searches related to Ashley Madison.
He might have visited the site itself, which is a strong indicator that he’s either using it or just created an account.
That, or he’s thinking about it, which in perspective isn’t much better.
On Google, you can click on Journeys to see what exactly he’s searched for—was it AM’s prices, privacy policy, or anything else related?
Regardless, if he forgot to delete his search history, you’ll find something useful!
11. Check his Emails and see if there are any from Ashley Madison.
A lot of cheaters who use online dating tend to be exposed through their emails.
If your husband is on Ashley Madison, then he would have had to sign up using his email address.
In this case, there must be some sort of notification on his Email app!
Check his Email app and look for any AM emails—maybe an in-app notification, promotions, or even emails your husband has deleted.
When the Ashley Madison app sends notifications, it usually sends them to users’ email addresses, so this method could be quite useful!
However, note that even the app itself advises users to sign up with a different email address from what they usually use, so your husband may be doing just that.
Not only that, but he could have also disabled all notifications just to be sure.
12. If your partner has an iPhone, check his list of hidden purchases.
Apple makes it possible for users to both hide their purchases and check them—let’s utilize this feature!
Go to your husband’s iPhone’s App Store, click on his icon, and then tap on his name.
Go to Purchase History; if you don’t see anything there, click on Change Filters, Type, and pick the In-app Purchases option.
As I mentioned, men have to spend quite a chunk of change in Ashley Madison; to make the most out of the app, they most definitely make in-app purchases!
And those purchases will most likely show up in the list of Hidden Purchases.
13. There’s also a way to check if he deletes and re-installs the app!
If he’s a smart cheater, he would delete the app when he’s finished and re-install it whenever he needs it again.
But even if he does that, he’s not off the hook just yet; to see what apps he’s had installed on his phone, here’s what to do:
1. For iPhone, go to his App Store and click on his icon > Purchased > Not on This iPhone.
2. For Android, go to the Play Store > his icon > Manage Apps & Devices > Manage > Installed > Uninstalled.
If he deletes and installs AM regularly, you’ll see that at some point, the app has been used on his phone—and that’s all the info you need.
14. See if the Ashley Madison site has been visited using your Wi-Fi connection.
If you and your husband have a separate Wi-Fi connection, you can see what it’s been used for.
You can ask your Internet Service Provider for this information, or you can ask a tech-savvy friend to help you!
See the list; if you haven’t visited the Ashley Madison Website, then we know who has.
15. Be on the lookout for any cues that your husband is on Ashley Madison.
If we look at this whole situation on the bright side, cheaters usually show signs of cheating!
If your husband is using dating sites, he will behave in a very suspicious way—whether you notice or not.
Because of the type of platform that Ashley Madison is, he will try his hardest to hide the fact he’s using it.
That’s enough from me, though! Here are some signs that your husband is cheating on Ashley Madison or just dating sites in general:
- He’s changed all of his passwords;
- He won’t give you his phone, no matter what;
- He doesn’t even give you the chance to as much as look at his phone;
- He’s added new people you’ve never met on his social media;
- He gets texts and/or calls from strangers;
- He gets notifications from unusual apps (Ashley Madison in disguise);
- Your sex life has changed;
- He behaves in an emotionally-distant way;
- He leaves the room whenever he receives a call or text;
- He purchases stuff he doesn’t typically use (spoiling his lovers);
- He has a second phone or SIM card;
- His browsing history is always empty;
- He deletes his calls and messages;
- He receives cryptic messages (the way cheaters text each other to remain low-key);
- He gets texts from people with weird names, like a single emoji or an acronym that might stand for something else.
– Can I browse Ashley Madison without an account?
Unfortunately, the answer is no. You can’t browse Ashley Madison without an account.
Most dating sites don’t allow people to browse without signing up.
For you to browse and have access to Ashley Madison’s in-app features you need to create an account using an email address.
The thing with Ashley Madison…
I’m trying to keep things as objective as possible, however, what the site is used for isn’t exactly a secret!
In 2015, there was a data leak on it; people who used the app got exposed, which resulted in a lot of scandals and lives being ruined.
Ashley Madison advertises as the no. 1 dating site for married people—it almost gives people that little push to cheat on their spouses.
The main page of the website even talks about how monogamy can become monotonous, and how many people feel the same way.
It claims to be a place free of judgment, yet it’s very hard to not judge its users from outside the app, in the real world.
This isn’t exactly an unpopular opinion, but cheating is wrong no matter what; AM can also be used by single people, but the site promoting unfaithfulness to this extent makes people not want to touch it even with a 10-foot pole.