Dating sites seem to push the limits of truth in advertising, particularly when they use geotargeted text to enhance the appeal. Imagine the same ad with “Sarah in YourTown” added.

Personally, I think using a model-quality pic misses the point. Yes, it gets one’s attention, but at the same time it stretches the site’s credibility way past the breaking point. Can one really imagine that this hot babe is so desperate she enrolled on a third-tier dating site and is waiting to hear from dozens of geeks with a credit card and no social life? eHarmony’s approach, which uses normal-looking people in TV ads, is a lot better.

She is trying to get into modeling and she does these because she is trying to break into the modeling industry.

Google her name and it will be very apparent to you.

Mr. Quinn Lipin
SinglesNet
13A Highland Circle
Needham, MA 02494

This business appears to be is owned by a Mr. Quinn Lipin who also operates a home health care business from the same address with his bother Gustuf.

Meanwhile he is off getting married in Brazil with fireworks and everything and renting houses and yachts for him and his friends to go on vacation….must be nice!

Someone needs to do something about this – it is a disgrace and they sit there laughing all day long !

Me: Well, I feel I was duped too. Sad. I should have checked out the singlesnet.com site in google before paying, here’s the deal.

One of my email inboxes has been getting spammed regularly by singlesnet.com for months so, being single again, I finally caved and decided to check it out. I saw a couple cute interesting women that were communicating with me via the free flirt alerts for a few days. Then some of them started sending me “emails” so I felt encouraged to pay to read the messages. I paid and the inbox was empty. Then to make matters worse… I discovered two oddities:

1)

The previous day I was trolling/perusing Craigslist and responded to a personal ad in the romance-w4m section. Its Craigslist, its sorta like playing lotto, and I am pretty much sensitized to that whole scamming bot-filled scene. But the next morning I had a response in the email inbox. Body of the inbox message follows.

[--
Hey! How is it going? Thanks for the email. I don't normally do this sort of thing, but what the heck, you know? Lets see what happens! Anyway, I'd really like to meet up soon. If you follow this link I have some more pictures and my cell phone number. My screen name is janet241 on there, so type that in once you get on.

http://www.scriller.info/janet

It's free, you don't need a credit card or anything. Anyway, give me a call as soon as you can and we'll work something out! Talk to you soon and go out for coffee or something?

Janet
--]

Ok armed with this information, and thinking I might have someone interested, I went to spybot search and destroy… made sure it was updated and immunized and clicked the link. It took me to singlesnet.com. Wow what a coincidence, I just joined them, ho hum no never mind, let me search for Janet. Search for janet241 = no results found. WTF, she/it just emailed me her info. Oh well something is up, and this is when my ’spidey senses’ let me down, I’ll just email her back and alert her to the problem. I shot back an email with my screen name and never heard another peep. FOUL BALL.

2)

Later the same day, I am perusing singlesnet.com directly, over the weekend there were some really nice choices, maybe I will find some more. There were 3 different profiles that stood out… hot pictures for each but the profile said they were 40+. So being one to give compliments to women for looking good, I sent some flirts and emails. My inbox lit up almost immediately, “damn I am lucky”. But wait what is this? Looks like she copied a script, as its two paragraphs. Ok so now not only did my ears peak, I am also curious and suspicious. Now I have seen what skilled makeup artists can do, but what are the odds that 3 different womens profile shots use the techniques? So I shoot the next one a message, and wham my inbox is lit again. Damn the response is way too fast. Closer inspection of the profiles… they were different but they essentially were derivatives of each other. So now I start looking at the emails that were sent, and each of them having some form of [comfort ... @ yahoo.com] IM and wanting me to give them my MSN or Yahoo IM or email address. Damn a bot. ‘At this point I am still unaware of displays of Quinn Lipin character or who singlesnet.com is or about’. I go ahead and use the system to block both of them. Then I report them to the singlesnet.com customer support. They, customer support, will get back to me. So I return to perusing and there is yet another profile that is 40 something with a 20 something face and physique, check the profile and yep its another one. I try to send customer support notice for that one too, but their system only allows one open support request at a time. Later they respond that they notified the correct department to have the problem fixed. I also notice that all these odd profiles disappear. (The web interface keeps knocking me back to page 1 of the who’s ‘online browse’). I look at the clock and notice how much time I wasted and bounce. But for the remainder of the day its gnawing at me. So I popped them in google and eventually wound up here. Now I will see if I can get my money back. Wish me luck.

So in the end here are my deductions and determinations:

1. singlesnet.com is working over Craigslist seeding it with ads for non existent members, using other feeder domains like scriller.info to hide the fact that its them.
2. Its likely that my job postings on Craigslist is what spawned my inbox to be spammed in the first place.
3. singlesnet.com is either insecure to bots and/or seeding their database with fake profiles.
4. singlesnet.com may be feeding the free accounts with flirt alerts and emails to entice upgrades.
5. I am not the only one that is aware of this.
6. Its going to be more difficult to filter the real profiles from the peppered and fake.

To me this is like the old days when shady service stations would break bottles and dump nails up the road to boost tire sales.