Yeah, I figured as much. But how much can a stupid email address be worth? I get spam email offers all the time. I never buy any of it! I suppose some people do, but I can't imagine the click-thru ratio on these leads would be all that high. I don't see how this activity could possibly be lucrative enough to keep so many people busy doing it!

Does anyone have any specific knowledge as to precisely how these scammers make their money? (Aside from ultimately finding some sucker to send them "emergency funds"!) But do they get money just for collecting active email addresses or phone numbers? Or is there some other way to monetize these impersonations?

I have noticed, especially in recent years, that at least 90% of the women I have encountered on this site turn out to be scammers, frauds, impostors of some sort. (I don't have any knowledge about the men, but I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage there was similar.)

What is UP with all these phonies?? Usually you can spot them because they'll say they grew up in the States, but their profile will contain a obvious grammatical mistakes that clearly show that English is not their native language. Another obvious sign of phoniness is an accelerated urgency to collect my private email address and phone number. What do these
scammers do with this contact information? Do they sell them to Internet marketers who ultimately sent spam email to us? Can an active email address or phone number be so valuable to Internet marketers that they would pay these operators enough to go to the trouble of putting up and managing the phony profile of a "pretty girl", just to harvest the email addresses of unsuspecting guys? How lucrative can that be? Really, can anyone explain how these scammers work?

I usually explain to the women who press me for my contact information right away, that I'm wary of these phonies, so I don't divulge my contact info until I'm convinced the other party is a real woman hoping to connect with a real man, and not perhaps some 250 lb ex-linebacker just trying to get my email address! I then suggest that the quickest way to confirm that we're not impostors is to agree to hold a quick video chat on Skype. It's real time, it preserves our anonymity, and it'd be a fun way to hold our first virtual "coffee date". Invariably, I get no answer back, and the next day, when I click on her profile, her profile has been deactivated! Which pretty much confirms that "she" was indeed an impostor! But as soon as one phony impostor disappears, three more pop up, with perhaps a different phony picture posted. Seriously, it seems there are no more real women here! Everybody's a fraud!

Also...I notice there are certain cities or towns, that it turns out a lot of these phony women consistently list themselves as being from, that I can't find on Google Maps! So when I see a woman is from one of these non-existent towns, I can pretty much be assured that she's a phony! At least here in Southern California, these phony towns include Firestone Park, Federal, Foy. (It's interesting they all seem to start with F. Maybe that stands for "Fake"??) Does the Mingle2 site moderator have any knowledge about this?

So can anyone provide the real low-down on how these scammers generally operate? What's their end game? I suppose for many, the answer is, ultimately, to extract money from unwitting guys (or gals) who think they're helping out a "damsel in distress." But I think for some, they're just trying to harvest active email addresses and phone numbers! How do they "monetize" that? It doesn't seem there would be that much "value" in ferreting out someone's active email address! Am I wrong there? Can anyone provide real insight about this? And most importantly, how can we stop this?

-Garret

Yeah, it's happening to me too--everything I post appears twice!

I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me! (not really!)

Hope you get it fixed soon...

-Garret

I've also noticed this in several other profiles, but never took note until today. Specificaly I noticed it in the essay of the member jonesie45. She makes reference to someone losing their "pion". I believe what she meant to say was "passion", but the censors edited out the three letters "***" out of the middle of the word! Don't you think this a bit RIDICULOUS!?? Allow the word "passion" to be displayed! Or "analytical". Isn't this censored-word "protection" feature of your website kind of silly!!

Charles, when last I checked (maybe a week ago), this bug had NOT been fixed...I still could not save the edits to my profile essay, because it contained the letters "a n a l" (and I purposely separate them by spaces because otherwise, I think they might be asterisked out, even in this forum!) Are the developers indeed working on this, or has it slipped through a crack? It really is kind of ridiculous. Even if you want to censor that word, you could qualify the filter by putting spaces on both sides of the word, to make sure it censors just that word. As it is now, "canal", "analyst", or indeed my word "analytical" is flagged. Apparently it lets me keep my old version of the essay, despite containing the word analytical, but it doesn't let me save any new edited version. Can you follow up on this?
Thanks.

My profile essay contains the word "analytical". I wanted to edit some other part of my essay and when I tried to save the edit, it said that my essay contains the word "a n a l" which was a censored word, so it could not be saved unless it was changed. I don't know of any other word that means analytical" but doesn't contain those 4 letters! So I cancelled the changes. (Apparently it allows my older version of my essay to remain as is, but if I make changes to the essay, it will flag the letters "a n a l" and not let me save the new essay. But seriously...those 4 letters, even as part of another word, flags your essay and prevents it from being saved? Isn't that kind of ridiculous? What if I were an analyst? Would I not be able to even mention what I do for work because it CONTAINS those 4 offensive letters?

Idlehans

I seem to get a lot of women reaching out to me who are clearly imposters or scammers of some kind. Often they say they are from my local city, but from the way they use the language, it's clear they are not native born English speakers. They almost always post really attractive photos, and almost immediately want to take our communication off-site. I've actually obliged them in some cases, and almost invariably, they end up asking me to send them money to help them through some devastating crisis, at which point I recognize it's a scam. It's become so commonplace, I'm encountering more fake women than real women. (In fact, WAY more!) I've put it in my profile that I'm going to expect anyone I correspond with to have a live skype video chat with me to prove identity. Still, I get suspicious sounding women corresponding with me who seem really keen on getting me to email them privately, when all I know about her is that she's posted a hot picture. It's as if one of their goals is to harvest active email addresses. Does anyone know the details on how these scams work? Do they get something for just procuring an active email address?
What can be done to reduce this problem? I imagine a lot of women get scammed by men too. Is there a place on these bulletin boards somewhere where these kinds of scams are explained in detail? Forwarned is forearmed. Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?

The situation has recently arisen where as I'm reviewing new women in the Mutual Match area, the same women keep coming up. I click my 'Yes' or 'No' or 'Maybe' to them, but then they come right back up again. It's like these particular profiles seem stuck in my queue, and clicking my responses repeatedly doesn't seem to get rid of them. (FYI. the names on these two profiles are *edited by site admin*.) Is there any you you can look into this problem, maybe "flush" my queue, or something like that?
Thanks...

Well, now that I understand about this hidden spam filter, I would imagine you probably did indeed "intercept" my three messages to Hypchick two and three days ago.
So do I understand it then, that to include a link or an email address in a message to someone I haven't corresponded with yet, I need to spell it out in a way that doesn't explicitly trigger this spam filter? So I should write my email address, for example, as "garret at garretswayne dot com"? This website has no problem with members actually trading contact information, correct?
Please confirm, and thanks for the insight...
-Garret

Why would that be?
(That messages with a link or email address get sent to a spam folder.)

And where can we all locate our spam folders to check?

I suspect there's something wrong with the messaging interface for Mingle2.com. I've sent several messages to people which showed up in my Sent Mail folder as having been sent. But they never showed up in the Inbox of the person I sent it to. I know this because I sent a follow up message to the person, which they did respond to. And in their response, they confirmed they'd never gotten the original message. (And indeed, in my Sent Mail folder, those messages were shown as being Unread.)

It's happened again. I'd messaged a woman that sounded interesting to me. The Sent Mail page showed me she'd never even opened the message to read it. But the next day, she said Yes to a Mutual Match with me...but she still, according to the check flag on the Sent Mail page, hadn't read my message to her! So I sent her another follow up. That too, apparently, went unread. I sent a third message in hopes that would make it through. But it too seems to have gone unread.

I can't imagine a woman would say yes to a Mutual Match, then choose to not even open a message from the person she matched with. It's most likely that the message never showed up in her Inbox. And if so, there is indeed a problem with whatever servers handle your in-site communications.

Am I the only one, or is this something that others have seen or suspect?

-Garret Swayne

It all depends. If I was reconciled to her leaving and thought we'd both enjoy throwing down one last time, I'd say yes, for old-time's sake. But if I thought it would just be too sad or weird, I'd say no.

But reading other people's responses, interesting questions arise. All you people who basically answered "Hell no!"....Do you view sex with your partner as some sort of reward to them for staying in relationship with you? And as soon as they no longer want to remain in that relationship, you want to punish them for that by taking back that reward? That's kinda what it sounds like.

If I'm sexually drawn to my partner today, and find out she wants to leave me tomorrow, well I'd be sad, hurt, disappointed, etc. But I'd probably still feel the same sexual attraction for her; her decision to leave would have no effect on that. I'm sure I could still enjoy having sex with her. Now I might still decide not to, just because under the circumstances, I might not be able to get myself emotionally into the space to enjoy it. But that decision wouldn't be to punish her! It wouldn't be a "Hell, no!"

Are you a woman (or a man) who only offers your partner sex for good behavior? If so, do you think perhaps you might be missing the full enjoyment of sex, if you have it wired up to some system of reward and punishment for your partner's behavior?

Just something to think about...