Data pulled from the Ashley Madison hack suggests most of the site’s female users were fake or inactive, Gizmodo reports. ​

A breakdown of how many active users there were gives a rough estimate of about 20 million men and only 2,500 or so women. Comparatively, there were around 31 million total male profiles and 5.5 million female profiles. So not only did men outnumber women more than 5 to 1, but less than 1 percent of those female profiles were even active. Which means that any guys looking to have an extramarital affair were spending tons of money (the site was free for women) for a site that gave them really, really low odds.

It’s impossible to give exact numbers based off the hacked info, and Gizmodo admits that it’s possible the majority of women who signed up for accounts just decided against it and never signed back in. However, circumstantial evidence — suspicious email accounts, hundreds of profiles bearing the very unique name of a former Ashley Madison employee, and a questionable number of profiles created from Ashley Madison’s own IP address​ —​ at least suggest that the company could’ve been padding their female user base with fake profiles. Even their terms of service warn that any number of profiles could’ve been created for “entertainment purposes.”

What does seem very likely is that very few women actively used the site: Only 1,492 women ever bothered to check their inbox on the site, and only 2,409  ever used Ashley Madison’s chat feature. Meanwhile, 20 million men checked their emails and 11 million men used chat.

It’s funny, because it’s kind of like these guys were unknowingly lied to. You know, like what people who have affairs do. At least technically they got screwed.

[via Cosmopolitan]