Some Spammer Has a Crush on You 283
A friend of mine and I were bit by SomeoneLikesYou in the last week. The scam is elegant in its simplicity. The site teases you with an email claiming to know someone who likes you, then makes you guess who it might be by submitting their email address(es). Each of those addresses receives a teaser email just like yours. Rinse, repeat. I ignored the message -- obviously a fake; I couldn't possibly be anyone's crush :-) -- but my friend took the bait and fed it some demographic data and email addresses. Once she realized what was going on, she wrote to everyone apologizing for any spam they may have received. She also sent a nastygram to the site's operators.
It should be pointed out that there is no proof that SomeoneLikesYou is doing anything nefarious with the data they're collecting. However, their credibility is not strengthened by their faked WHOIS records and their meaningless doubletalk on privacy issues (the declaration, "We send precisely zero e-mail advertisements," says nothing about the behavior of their partners/affiliates.)"
awwwww damn (Score:5, Funny)
Oh No! (Score:3, Funny)
This is obviously a ploy. (Score:4, Funny)
We did this in primary school (Score:5, Funny)
ME: Oh yeah? Who?
SOME GIRL: Will you pay me if I let you have a guess?
ME: I don't care, I'm rich, there you go. Is it SHE?
SOME GIRL: No. Nice try, though.
[later...]
SOME GIRL: Hey OTHER GIRL, I know somebody who likes you
SHE: Oh yeah? Who?
SOME GIRL: Will you pay me if I let you have a guess?
SHE: There you go. Is it stere0?
(note: I didn't have facial hair in primary school)
SOME GIRL: No.
I overheard them, and this is how SOME GIRL got rich by doing this to the whole school and how I got my first kiss a couple of weeks later.
It's FAKE?! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh No! (Score:1, Funny)
If you get one of these emails it is bogus.
Come on... you read slashdot, how could it be real?
Nothing immoral about this at all (Score:5, Funny)
"Mass email marketer ISO young, wealthy singles with low self-esteem and money to burn. Low IQ is a plus, gullibility even better. Turn-ons: making telephone calls at dinnertime, taking long walks on the beach with your money."
Does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm too smart to fall for this (Score:2, Funny)
Someone's operating the scam in Holland too (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, speaking of googling, there was a hilarious spelling mistake at the end "Wil je weten wie je geheime *aanbieder* is?" ("Do you want to know who your secret admirer is", except they put an 'e' in "aanbidder" where a 'd' should be, "aanbieder" means "provider")
I couldn't find a reference on the internet to this operation, so I figured it might be legit. I called to the number they gave: 09062001372 (couple dozen eurocents a minute). They pulled the same routine as described above. I had to enter my own phone number (as if they didn't have it) then take a guess as to who left my number in the first place (I gave a bogus number). Then I was promised they'd SMS the number of my secret provider, but of course they never did.
I suppose this scam pays off quite well. I'm a pretty suspicious person as a rule, but in this case, especially after I couldn't find any information about it on the internet, I just had to check it out. They got about 3 minutes worth of high phone rates out of me.
Re:This is obviously a ploy. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Those things are spam + social engineering (Score:0, Funny)
AOL and Montag
Sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
Re:Those things are spam + social engineering (Score:0, Funny)
You already know that lewinski@fatbrain.com already likes you. You have no need for a service like this.
Re:awwwww damn (Score:0, Funny)
Re:We did this in primary school (Score:3, Funny)
Someone has a crush on the debian project (Score:3, Funny)
http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2001/deb
Re:i wonder if you ever find out... (Score:2, Funny)
Are you sure? Do you know if this loser Sara is right for you?