Mate1 - Mate One, Meet Zero: Dating Site Full of Cheap Tricks Plattsburgh New York

It's another case of speaking too soon. Mate1 has handed over my site-specific email address to the spammers. The address I gave it was generated by an email alias service, used exclusively for Mate1 traffic, and never publicized, therefore I know this was done willfully to profit from an otherwise dormant account. I've not so much as loaded Mate1's home page, and saw little if any use of my old address since abandoning the site. All of a sudden last week I see 32 attempts by spammers to reach me within three days. The ones that made it to my inbound pile are mostly of the cheap variety imploring the recipient to either enlarge or reduce a given body part, and tend to share a similar layout and verbiage. Total trash, of course, but at least no spoofs of financial sites are evident.

Just as happened with Eroticy, this incident comes about a year after dumping Mate1's highly dubious service for good. You'll recall my revised email notification settings were ignored and profile settings changed after I gave the nose-thumbing salute on my way out. Similarly the timing of this spam barrage strikes me as retaliatory, for the cold bath I gave them here on RoR in October. But maybe I'm granting them too much credit for alertness. Still, if right now you run a simple unfiltered search on the term "Mate1", user complaints appear in the top ten results. A lot of them cite the usual problems with bad dating sites, such as predatory billing practices and flimsy come-ons from shill members. Often a Mate1 rep posts a softsoaping rebuttal in these forums, suggesting user error, yet the bait-switch routine remains a part of their business model.

Just to be fair, I loaded the home page today for the first time in a year and found this notice on its login prompt: "We will NEVER spam you." Really now .... Mate1 may not spam, but they have plenty of pals who will once their contact list is traded or sold. Then there is that gray matter definition of "spam", which one critic of Mate1 has clarified neatly:

[BEGIN QUOTE]
"Online Ambassador" is a loophole disguised as a novel idea by Mate1 so they can legally get away with spamming their users and scamming them into staying or renewing.
[END QUOTE]
(See entire post here: onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/12/mate1_online_am.html)

I must append my prior entry here, which was quietly redacted right after I announced "my list of correspondents". There was no personally identifying data beyond user handles, ages, and place names, and this assumes any of them can be trusted. Point was, they ostensibly hailed from all parts of the U.S. and Canada, and whenever a message seemed to originate from within my home state the listed town was fictitious. Clearly something smelled wrong about Mate1, and this has been echoed by others who lost a great deal more time and money trying to disassociate from the site.

Aside: A breezy interview with the CEO was posted in September, floating frightening plans to expand the user base into European and Asian markets and somehow integrate phone contact between members. No one used the phrase "mobile phone", but no doubt the impulsive nature of the wireless culture is just what they'd like to exploit with their obfuscating "trial" offer.

onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2007/09/liz-wasserman-m.html

It's another case of speaking too soon. Mate1 has handed over my site-specific email address to the spammers. The address I gave it was generated by an email alias service, used exclusively for Mate1 traffic, and never publicized, therefore I know this was done willfully to profit from an otherwise dormant account. I've not so much as loaded Mate1's home page, and saw little if any use of my old address since abandoning the site. All of a sudden last week I see 32 attempts by spammers to reach me within three days. The ones that made it to my inbound pile are mostly of the cheap variety imploring the recipient to either enlarge or reduce a given body part, and tend to share a similar layout and verbiage. Total trash, of course, but at least no spoofs of financial sites are evident.

Just as happened with Eroticy, this incident comes about a year after dumping Mate1's highly dubious service for good. You'll recall my revised email notification settings were ignored and profile settings changed after I gave the nose-thumbing salute on my way out. Similarly the timing of this spam barrage strikes me as retaliatory, for the cold bath I gave them here on RoR in October. But maybe I'm granting them too much credit for alertness. Still, if right now you run a simple unfiltered search on the term "Mate1", user complaints appear in the top ten results. A lot of them cite the usual problems with bad dating sites, such as predatory billing practices and flimsy come-ons from shill members. Often a Mate1 rep posts a softsoaping rebuttal in these forums, suggesting user error, yet the bait-switch routine remains a part of their business model.

Just to be fair, I loaded the home page today for the first time in a year and found this notice on its login prompt: "We will NEVER spam you." Really now .... Mate1 may not spam, but they have plenty of pals who will once their contact list is traded or sold. Then there is that gray matter definition of "spam", which one critic of Mate1 has clarified neatly:

[BEGIN QUOTE]
"Online Ambassador" is a loophole disguised as a novel idea by Mate1 so they can legally get away with spamming their users and scamming them into staying or renewing.
[END QUOTE]
(See entire post here: onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/12/mate1_online_am.html)

I must append my prior entry here, which was quietly redacted right after I announced "my list of correspondents". There was no personally identifying data beyond user handles, ages, and place names, and this assumes any of them can be trusted. Point was, they ostensibly hailed from all parts of the U.S. and Canada, and whenever a message seemed to originate from within my home state the listed town was fictitious. Clearly something smelled wrong about Mate1, and this has been echoed by others who lost a great deal more time and money trying to disassociate from the site.

Aside: A breezy interview with the CEO was posted in September, floating frightening plans to expand the user base into European and Asian markets and somehow integrate phone contact between members. No one used the phrase "mobile phone", but no doubt the impulsive nature of the wireless culture is just what they'd like to exploit with their obfuscating "trial" offer.

onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2007/09/liz-wasserman-m.html

It's another case of speaking too soon. Mate1 has handed over my site-specific email address to the spammers. The address I gave it was generated by an email alias service, used exclusively for Mate1 traffic, and never publicized, therefore I know this was done willfully to profit from an otherwise dormant account. I've not so much as loaded Mate1's home page, and saw little if any use of my old address since abandoning the site. All of a sudden last week I see 32 attempts by spammers to reach me within three days. The ones that made it to my inbound pile are mostly of the cheap variety imploring the recipient to either enlarge or reduce a given body part, and tend to share a similar layout and verbiage. Total trash, of course, but at least no spoofs of financial sites are evident.

Just as happened with Eroticy, this incident comes about a year after dumping Mate1's highly dubious service for good. You'll recall my revised email notification settings were ignored and profile settings changed after I gave the nose-thumbing salute on my way out. Similarly the timing of this spam barrage strikes me as retaliatory, for the cold bath I gave them here on RoR in October. But maybe I'm granting them too much credit for alertness. Still, if right now you run a simple unfiltered search on the term "Mate1", user complaints appear in the top ten results. A lot of them cite the usual problems with bad dating sites, such as predatory billing practices and flimsy come-ons from shill members. Often a Mate1 rep posts a softsoaping rebuttal in these forums, suggesting user error, yet the bait-switch routine remains a part of their business model.

Just to be fair, I loaded the home page today for the first time in a year and found this notice on its login prompt: "We will NEVER spam you." Really now .... Mate1 may not spam, but they have plenty of pals who will once their contact list is traded or sold. Then there is that gray matter definition of "spam", which one critic of Mate1 has clarified neatly:

[BEGIN QUOTE]
"Online Ambassador" is a loophole disguised as a novel idea by Mate1 so they can legally get away with spamming their users and scamming them into staying or renewing.
[END QUOTE]
(See entire post here: onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/12/mate1_online_am.html)

I must append my prior entry here, which was quietly redacted right after I announced "my list of correspondents". There was no personally identifying data beyond user handles, ages, and place names, and this assumes any of them can be trusted. Point was, they ostensibly hailed from all parts of the U.S. and Canada, and whenever a message seemed to originate from within my home state the listed town was fictitious. Clearly something smelled wrong about Mate1, and this has been echoed by others who lost a great deal more time and money trying to disassociate from the site.

Aside: A breezy interview with the CEO was posted in September, floating frightening plans to expand the user base into European and Asian markets and somehow integrate phone contact between members. No one used the phrase "mobile phone", but no doubt the impulsive nature of the wireless culture is just what they'd like to exploit with their obfuscating "trial" offer.

onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2007/09/liz-wasserman-m.html