The Shady Business Practices of Classmates.com 275
eldavojohn writes ""Some of your classmates are trying to contact you!" reads one e-mail. Attempts to remove yourself from the mailing list may only result in more mailings from the site of ill repute. Well, Ars Techica brings us news of a suit against Classmates.com. You don't need to look far for anti-classmates.com sentiment spreading like wild fire across the tubes." Good next target: ads that say "you've already won" some expensive toy.
Never got anything from them (Score:5, Insightful)
And they'll never get anything from me. Hell, if I wanted to (not that I do) I could simply go to the website of the college I graduated from and look up the contact information of other alumni who have registered there. Some universities, like Harvard, offer lifetime e-mail addresses, etc. for alumni. There's a whole post.harvard.edu domain just for alumni there. Even my high school keeps track of alumni and has mailing lists, etc. available. I've never gotten spammed by classmates.com and I wouldn't bother visiting if I did. I'll just go straight to my schools websites.
Why use that? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why use Classmates.com when you have Myspace.com or Facebook.com
Seems to be the best way (For me at least) to stay in touch with old High School pals.
Re:Why use that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why use Classmates.com when you have Myspace.com or Facebook.com?
Many of us who are 30+ associate those sites with the "OMG PONIES!" crowd. I'm sure that's probably changing as their userbase ages, but that's first impressions for you. If anybody my age had a myspace page, my first reaction would be that he's a total loser or way too interested in teenagers to be healthy.
Accountability? (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is how surprising it is to see classmates.com being taken to task. I've reached the point where I hear of an organization sending unsolicited lies to people in order to trick them and flood them with advertising, and I think nothing of it. It's the way he world works - but maybe it doesn't have to be the way the world works.
Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, bla bla bla, social networking, bla. Classmates.com, facebook, myspace, and everything else like it exist for two purposes: Selling advertising, and collecting aggregate data. We all know this. All pretense of "keeping in touch" is nothing more than the carrot to collect your information. No big deal, although it does bear repeating now and then.
However, the people behind classmates.com have gone one step farther--they're actively lying to get people to (a) sign up, and (b) pay for a "premium" membership. This is absolutely clear fraud on their part, and I hope they get kicked to the curb for it. Being a sleazy company operating within the law just wasn't enough for them.
Hopefully "eCrush" is next. The fact that they keep getting in trouble and keep popping back up with the same crap is reason enough to throw them in jail.
Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
Classmates did come out before MySpace and FaceBook but they made a mistake in trying to get money out of their customers before they had a reasonable userbase. They could have started out a completely free service(by completely, I mean allowed all features for free and not have to pay to contact people like dating sites...and even dating sites allow you to see somebody's complete profile without charging!) and then charged small fees as necessary.
I can't stand when Classmates sends me mails telling me how many people viewed my profile, only to find that it was only a ruse to get me to build a profile in the first place! Reminds me of trillian when I always had annoying AOL or Yahoo(can't remember which) mail notifications which served no purpose but to nag me into signing up for the respective mail service.
Classmates blew it (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you, sonny. (Score:2, Insightful)
Go check out Facebook. You might be surprised. Virtually everyone I know with a computer uses Facebook - more than half of my friends on FB are over 25.
So they're 26,27, and some old farts who are 28?
LinkLn is the site for professionals.
BTW, I have neither. I do not want my information all over the internet.
I'll be curious to see what you young'ins reap with all this in a few years.
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well they make their money selling advertising and collecting data for marketing information. That isn't necessarily bad as they offer a service that people actually like, and means if you are going to get advertising you will probably see more that is based on what you are interested in and less in the random stuff. However you must realize these services will not be around unless they know of a way to use it to maintain revenue. Not that being said. Trying to trick people into paying for a service is wrong. Yes it works but good business is to make people want to on their own free will happy to pay for the service. Not try to trick them into it.
Next in my sights . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
reunion.com
Same misleading type of message, but I've apparently gotten signed up for them by some chucklehead can't type his own gmail address. The first email I got from them said "confirm your membership" which of course I didn't. And big surprise, there's nothing in that email that will let me say "hey, you've got the wrong man." (I spell my name . . . Danger). And even though I didn't confirm "my" membership, I still got additional email with "1 Search for Joe Doaks - Find Out Who!"
Thank $DIETY for gmail's instantly trainable spam filter.
Happens often. (Score:5, Insightful)
AS part of my job, I get calls from angry card holders who've have been billed fraudulently by websites such as this one.
Another scam is when websites require a CC for their "Free Trial" and all you have to do is cancel before 30 days so you don't get billed. Well, in most cases, folks who do cancel somehow have their cancellation "lost" or "never received" by the company. And those are the folks who actually remembered to cancel on time. Unfortunately, there wasn't much the CC company would do for them. Call your own company and see - some will back their card holders a bit more than others. Credit Unions are the best in my experience. Big monster mega banks are the worst.
Never give a CC for a "Free Trial". Take your business elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I knew an operator that counted on most people forgetting and then when they get their bill the following month, canceling in writing, and then being billed for another month because they were already in a second billing period. He made at least 2 months of revenues off of those people. He was actually honest. When you canceled, he canceled you.
And for the very few legitimate businesses out there that use that technique; well, find another method to limit free trials.
If you do have a problem with those cheating assholes, file a complaint with your State's Attorney General's office of consumer affairs, your bank, the FTC, and if your bank gives you a hassle, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency [occ.gov] will kick their ass. The BBB is worthless.
Re:Facebook for dummies? (Score:3, Insightful)
That is a very rational approach, I see you're taking. BUt you seem to be hung up on a bit. You don't ever need to supply them with any personal data at all if you don't want to. Oh sure it asks for things like birthdate, place of birth and various other personal information. Why on earth do you think you need to supply it with valid data? They aren't going to do a fbi background check to see if your information is valid. It will still work just as well.
Re:Already illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Feeding the Anonymous troll, but. . .
Putting "may" or "might" in there doesn't make it any less false. It is simply not true that you may have already won. There is ZERO chance that you have already won. It would be accurate to say "You may win, just as soon as you click here," no matter how slim the chance is, but you absolutely have not "already won" if you haven't clicked on the banner yet.
Unless you seriously believe that they have created their list of winners beforehand, and just need your information to check against this established list.
And if you believe that. . . well, um. . . Good! Because you may already have won the Zenaku Cash Prize for Exceptional Cleverness! Just give me your real name, social security number, date and place of birth, and the middle names of your parents and grandparents so I can open the top secret "Envelope of Winners" and see if YOUR name is inside!
Re:Why use that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for all these 'Ride a pony!' apps requests my friends keep sending me..
We can stop dancing around the obvious... Facebook/Myspace=GeoCities
Close....the real formula is Facebook/Myspace=GeoCities/AngelFire
Re:They are also giving out your credit card... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why use that? (Score:1, Insightful)
That's true for MySpace, but not for Facebook. Sounds like you're basing your opinion on Facebook on MySpace.
Go check out Facebook. You might be surprised. Virtually everyone I know with a computer uses Facebook - more than half of my friends on FB are over 25.
Except Facebook is increasingly turning into MySpace these days.
Re:Google FTW (Score:2, Insightful)
Ssshhh stop telling everyone. If everyone started using adblock, I'd have to start paying for Slashdot.
Re:Why use that? (Score:3, Insightful)