The chief executive of the controversial dating site Ashley Madison has stepped down.

In a move many found unsurprising following the hacking and leak of the infidelity hub’s membership details, Noel Biderman has resigned as chief executive of parent company Avid Life Media.

It appears to have been a pretty amicable break-up, unlike many caused by the Ashley Madison leak, with the company and Mr Biderman saying they had reached “mutual agreement” about the move.

“This change is in the best interest of the company and allows us to continue to provide support to our members and dedicated employees,” Avid Life Media said.

The firm is “adjusting to the attack on our business and members' privacy by criminals”, it said, pledging that members’ access to the site will be uninterrupted from now on.

Senior managers will fill Mr Biderman's role until a new boss is found, Avid Life Media said.

Philanderous folk around the world were petrified after news broke that the hacking squad “Impact Team” was releasing emails and account information of Ashley Madison members.

But the concerns of the partners being cheated on may have been tempered by expert analysis that found a vast majority of the accounts on the site belonged to males.

It appears that millions of fake female profiles were set up and run by the company to convince men that the site was full of eligible women.

Careful scrutiny of the data has shown that about 5.5 million fake female accounts were created with a single localhost IP of 127.0.0.1.

In addition, thousands of accounts listed AshleyMadison.com email addresses as their primary contacts, using addresses like This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and so on.

The hacked information included logs of the dates that users checked their inbox.

Analysts say the data shows 20,269,675 inbox checks by male accounts, while just 1,492 women had ever viewed their inbox.