Concering sendacrush.com

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So I recieve this e-mail saying:

"Someone you know has anonymously sent you this email to let you know they have a crush on you. If you can guess their email, we'll tell you if you're right!"

I go ahead, thinking this might be a certain cute dude I've been chatting up on AOL lately. I enter some scant information about myself (all wrong, of course) and enter the lead suspect's e-mail address and...nothing. So I try the addresses of some of the gay guys I know...then the women...then the straight men. (Hey, weirder things have happened.) Then I give up, wondering what kind of idiot is gonna send me an e-crush if I can't easily guess their e-mail?

After discussing this situation with a friend, we both suddenly realize I've been had. I've just entered e-mail addresses to some website I know nothing about. Fuck. Once I start hearing similar stories from people whose e-mails I've entered in, I soon fabulate this scenario: these e-mails are completely bogus. Nobody (alas) has some crush on me that they're too shy to tell me about via normal e-mail. The e-mail is just a ruse to get people to enter e-mail addresses to their site. The company then uses these addresses to send other, similarly bogus crush alerts. Soon the company's amassed a huge list of e-mail adresses with hotcha demographic appeal, a list they might be selling it to other unscrupulous spammers.

Sure enough, check out their "privacy" policy:

"If a user enters an email address, either through the 'Send a crush', 'Check a crush', or the ‘Notify a friend’ tools, we may, at our discretion, send an invitation to join Send-A-Crush to that email address."

"Any and all information provided by any user may be shared with other organizations so that these organizations may enhance their databases with additional user demographic information and send e-mail marketing messages from which we think our users will benefit."

Motherfuckers. I only wanted to be loved.

― Michael Daddino, Saturday, 12 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

What's even more special about this charade is that it occurs just at the moment when my self-esteem is really down. My rosacea has just flared-up big-time, right after having laser surgery that was supposed to alleviate it. So you can imagine how mildly enticing the possibility of an online crush might be for me.

― Michael Daddino, Saturday, 12 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

D'oh. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I was momentarily thrilled by a similar prospect a few months back, but gave up after navigating the site a bit as well.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 13 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i got two at once!! i too was confused, until i realised they are from ally and dave q

― mark s, Sunday, 13 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There's a really evil variant of this site (can't remember its name, but you'll know because at least it has the good grace to tell you afterwards that you've been had) that is not just a scam but a practical joke - the e-mails you enter are sent back to whoever (anonymously) sent the crush to you, so they know which people you *want* to have a crush on you. All this *and* you open yourself up to spam.

Luckily, it was my sister and not I who was the victim of this.

― Tim, Sunday, 13 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I once did one of these, and it said if you kept getting the email addresses wrong it would eventually give you clues. So I luckily only entered addresses like [email protected].

― Melissa W, Sunday, 13 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one month passes...

I got one of these and gradually got suspicious as I tried the addresses of the relatively few people who might conceivably be using the email address at which I received the original spam. (Fortunately none of them are remotely romantic prospects -- one's my mom, for example.) None of them matched, and after some thought and research I realized that I'd just sold out friends and family.

This site is evil; it's about the worst thing of this type I've ever seen.

So, I sent a no-bones-about-it threatening email to the admin of the site, demanding that they remove the addresses I supplied from their database. If they don't give me satisfaction, and/or I hear that my friends have gotten this crap, I'm going to pay them a personal visit -- their office is just four blocks from mine, if the address they list is accurate. I might go over there anyway to chew them out.

BTW, it was embarrassing to write the apologetic email to the people whose addresses I gave out, but I did it anyway. I'm glad there were only four of them.

--blake

― Blake, Tuesday, 26 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

crushlink.com should be burned to the ground.

― bnw, Tuesday, 26 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The strangest thing about these e-mails I received is that there was not only my e-mail address but my nickname on it, just like somebody who really knows me copied it from the address book. That was the main reason I went to check this site as I was sure it was not spam. I spent quite a lot time trying to do the same {enter not only e- mail address but the name of recipient as well) and discovered that in that case e-mails did not reached me.

― Sarah, Monday, 11 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

OH MELISSA I ONLY WANTED TO BE LOVED

― john asdjahsfjahsktugaei, Monday, 11 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

two months pass...

Yah... after I'd entered 2 bogus email addresses and 2 or 3 real ones, I suspected I'd been had too... then I went on Google and found this thread!

To the guy who's office is 4 blocks from the "send a crush" people, Ill send the matches, if you supply the gasoline !!!

bill

― Chicago Bill, Saturday, 1 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I got one of these today and I thought hey it's my friend or someone else I know. I did the email thing and then thought about it as a scam to collect emails, yeah I was a little ticked. If you want to do something about spam send it all to: this email address was released in an article in Yahoo magazine to combat spam. Oh what is the office address for this company? Someone said they know.

Frank

― Frank O'Neill, Wednesday, 12 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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