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Paramout films pirated the most
MUMBAI: Piracy, the world over, has crossed extreme limits. Not only has pirates expanded their cobwebs in India, they have mushroomed in several places in the world in all formats of piracy.
Online pirates came out with more than 20 million copies of Star Trek and the sequel to Transformers giving the two Paramount Pictures releases the dubious distinction of being the most ripped-off films of the year, according to a report released by file-sharing tracking service, TorrentFreak.
Though the Transformers sequel bettered Star Trek at the box-office, Trekkie favourites Kirk and Spock were more popular than morphing car-robots among digital thieves.
TorrentFreak reported that Star Trek was illegally downloaded just under 11 million times, while 10.6 million copies of Transformers were copied.
While the exact data is difficult to get, pirated copies certainly seem to have cost Viacom. For the period ended 30 September, worldwide revenue at the Viacom-owned studio fell 13 per cent to $3.7 billion.
Other films on TorrentFreak‘s top 10 most illegally-downloaded list include films like The Hangover, Twilight, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The list also includes films like Knowing, State of Play and District 9 which do not rank in the top 20 in terms of box-office gross.
“As we look over the rest of the top 10, we see that there are quite a few differences between popularity at the box office and on [rogue file sharer] BitTorrent,” said TorrentFreak of its report.
Though Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and 2012 rank second and fourth based on their worldwide grosses, but they didn‘t make it into the top 10 list of most swapped movies.
The illegal downloads could also cost Viacom-owned Paramount bragging rights. Warner Bros currently ranks as the highest-grossing studio overall, bringing in just under $2 billion for the year.
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With 57 per cent single new users, Ashley Madison rebrands as discreet dating platform
Platform says majority of new members now identify as single
INDIA: Ashley Madison is shedding the “married-dating” label that defined it for two decades, repositioning itself as a platform for discreet dating in what it calls the post-social media age.
The rebrand, unveiled in India on 27 February, 2026, marks a structural shift in business model and identity. Once synonymous with married dating, the company now describes itself as the “premier destination for discreet dating” under a new tagline: Where Desire Meets Discretion.
The pivot is data-driven. Internal figures show that 57 per cent of global sign-ups between 1 January and 31 December, 2025 identified as single: a notable departure from the platform’s married core. The company argues that its community has already evolved beyond its original positioning.
“In an age where our lives have been constantly put on public display, privacy has become the new luxury,” said Ashley Madison chief strategy officer Paul Keable. He framed the platform’s offering as “ethical discretion” for singles, separated, divorced and non-monogamous users seeking private connections.
The shift also taps into wider digital fatigue. A global survey conducted by YouGov for Ashley Madison, covering 13,071 adults across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, found mounting discomfort with hyper-public online lives.
Among dating app users, 30 per cent cited constant swiping and messaging as a source of fatigue, while 24 per cent pointed to pressure to curate public-facing profiles and early personal disclosure. Some 27 per cent said fears of screenshots or information being shared contributed to exhaustion; an equal share cited unwanted attention.
The retreat from oversharing appears broader. According to the survey, 46 per cent of adults actively try to keep most aspects of their life private online. Only 8 per cent feel comfortable sharing most aspects publicly, while 35 per cent say they are becoming more selective about what they disclose.
Ashley Madison is betting that this cultural recalibration towards controlled visibility can be monetised. By doubling down on privacy infrastructure and reframing itself around discretion rather than infidelity, the company is attempting to convert reputational baggage into a premium proposition.
