"AFF were those responsible for utterly destroying the Yahoo! profile database with fake ID's"
In a circuitous way yes.
AFF paid affiliate fees to those who can get new signups onto their site. That gives them plausible deniability over the spamming (and a way of not paying out if there are complaints). Other sex site operators copied this method and affiliate spam is still one of the more pernicious things to deal with as there's no legislation to hold the businesses jointly and severally responsible for the actions of "affiliates".
The business itself is toxic. Penthouse bought them out a few years ago for around $500mil, but it turned out to be a poison pill and now AFF's creator owns Penthouse.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
