I joined Ashley Madison this year, during a very, very stressful period, both personally and professionally. But my intentions were never actually to meet another woman, and I quickly realised that this was not going to be a good way of meeting new people.

In total, I used the site for a single month, getting almost zero responses. Once I realised that it was going nowhere, and that I would have never left my family behind, I decided to just quit. So I paid my €19 (£15) to get rid of everything, deleted the mobile app and removed everything: email accounts, messages, etc.

A month later, I learned about the leak from Brian Krebs. I have been working in the IT field since I left university back in 1999, and when the dump was finally made public, well: curiosity killed the cat. I decided to download the files.

I felt a cold sweat when I saw my details in the dump. It was me, I knew that; it was not a hack, or a fake account. Needless to say, I opened all the databases up and started searching for more details, trying to see how deep they got. My credit card transactions were there, which linked to other tables with my full name, and even my GPS location. So much for the “full delete” – if Ashley Madison charged for a service they didn’t provide, I would like to know.

Over the last few days, my feelings have changed from fear to anger. Ethics aside, why did I get charged for deletion and then [was] still on the database? Why can they not just delete your fucking profile as if it never happened?

Then I decided to contact customer service and ask why I was there. A couple of days later, they told me:

“Our records indicate that your account was deleted using the Full Profile Deletion option on 7 July, 2015.

“At Ashley Madison your privacy is of the utmost importance to us. Rest assured that the feature you chose is the best way to make sure your profile is completely removed from our service… It is like you were never even here.”

So why is my name in their database?

I plan to claim damages, if there are more like me. I definitely expect some money from them. What I did to my family is on me, but what they have done to me is wrong. And they won’t write a letter to my wife saying I never signed up, will they?

I haven’t told my wife. I don’t even know if I should.