The Bot Who Loved Me
from the how-sweet dept
Salon has an article about a particular "crush" site that many people suspsect is really a sneaky spam scam. There have been a number of "crush" sites that ask you to enter in the email of someone you have a crush on. Then they email that person and make them guess who the person is. However, this particular site has been sending out a ridiculous number of crush emails - leading people to believe it was actually a spam front. The theory was that they bought spam lists, spammed everyone as if they had a crush - and then used all the new email addresses that were entered for more spam. Whoever was behind the site was hidden away. However, some geeks finally tracked them down - and they swear there's no spamming involved. However, there certainly are some questionable marketing practices.
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Dur-hey.
It's really insidious too. I mean, who wouldn't want to know who has a crush on them? And then the people who's email addresses you entered, who you do not actuall have a crush on, will want to know who has a crush on them too, etc.
The entire system is almost completely useless for it's stated purpose (ie, discretely finding out if person X could be romantically interested in you). Pretty much the only thing it is useful for would be harvesting emails.
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