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Share Your Experiences

Karen Ranney

My experience

I received a flurry of emails a few months ago from the same group, with the tag line of "Want to know what people think of you?" Well, shoot, who doesn't? The kicker seems to be that you have to join, pay money, or otherwise give them something first. Bottom line, I consider them a scam, pure and simple and they're on my blocked email list. No, I never did learn what people think of me. Gossip is still gossip, even when the back fence has been replaced by a keyboard.
 

DaveKuzminski

Re: My experience

What bothers me about it is the clandestine nature of how it operates.

Anyone want to take bets on how long it will be until they're sued? They may claim that what they're doing is legal, but that could be a bluff meant to put off most people from taking them to court. (By happenstance, I ran across a short article about libel suits and a paper was found liable for what someone else stated even though the court found the source of the statement to not be libelous.)
 

snarzler

I ended up on the paypal site.

ETA I got it now.

No, I think they're targeting respected people in specific fields in order to get some legitimacy. I would run.

Gee, I got to offer advice to Dave!

Andrea :peace
 

reph

I got an e-mail from them a couple of weeks ago and looked at the site. They said that one person sought info about me and two persons had info about me, or else the other way round, I forget. I only looked at the site, didn't respond to anything. I then put them on my "blocked senders" list.

Their FAQ page is...well, just read it. All nice and friendly, practically jumping onto your lap and licking your chin, until you get to "Remove me from your site." Then the answer is You Have NO RIGHT to Demand This! or some such. Same tone as PA uses with complaining authors.

The idea smells of week-old unrefrigerated whole raw salmon. Anyone who wants info about me and knows my name can look on Google. Anyone who knows my e-mail address but not my name can e-mail me with questions, although it isn't clear why such a person would want to ask me anything.

P.S.: Two more e-mails like that one arrived today, under different sender names but both with links to the ShareYourExperiences site.
 

HapiSofi

Reph, I first heard about these guys when an editor I know received what sounds like the same letter you got: Two people have furnished information about you and one person is asking for it, so don't you want to come look at the site? I went and checked it out for her, but couldn't find word one about her. Then, a month later, I got that same letter.

I smelled the same reek you did coming off the whole enterprise, especially their excessively defensive language about not being obliged to take names off their site: suddenly, they sounded like out-and-out scammers.
 

DaveKuzminski

Strong whiff of something

And it's not perfume.

My guess is that the emails are a come-on to get people to wonder what's being said about them and purchase one of the high level memberships in hopes of seeing something that might affect them. In short, a legal bamboozle since they're not promising anything but the opportunity to look for yourself.

I wouldn't be surprised if they're harvesting email addresses to feed their site. First two rounds harvested email addresses to post in their database as the "I have information" entries and then work from that on a schedule to send out emails that someone is looking at what those others provided. All it takes is for the program to assign numbers as the identifications they use and they can instantly create thousands of "informants" and "purchasers".

I mean, let's face it, who's going to go to the trouble of registering with them to hand out information when more information than most people can use is available for free on the Internet with an Internet search engine? They're not buying information, so why pay to post something when there are free sites all over? It's nothing more than an interesting ploy to get people to pay them to post and to read.

They might be right that they're not involved in libel, but I wouldn't rule out fraud just yet.
 

veingloree

Re: Strong whiff of something

Exactly. Some-one's talking about you, buy a membership and find out what they said.

Let them talk about me to their heart's content, I say. My hard-earned money is staying in the bank.
 

reph

Re: Strong whiff of something

The smelly fish is filleted on this page, which contains a link to a Snopes article about an earlier enterprise that worked the same way.
 

DaveKuzminski

Yep, it's a scam

Reph, thanks for that link. That confirms my suspicions.

Upon first visiting their site, I wondered why they didn't have my name instead of my email address for P&E. That, in itself, made me suspicious. After all, the scammers and businesses that aren't recommended by P&E usually know my name. They usually do their Internet searches on that and not the email address which has changed a couple of times over the past eight years.
 

reph

Re: Yep, it's a scam

A link I followed from the fish-filleting page led to a discussion board where people were Sharing Their Experiences with Share Your Experiences. One person had bought a membership, e-mailed the supposed info seekers and info holders, and got no replies.

Who owns those e-mail addresses that a membership enables you to mail to? If I were designing such a scam, I wouldn't use addresses that belonged to other members. A new member would quickly find out that those people weren't talking about him. Would I make up addresses? No; a new member's e-mails would bounce. Besides, an invented address might accidentally belong to somebody real. Instead, I'd get a bunch of addresses myself and never answer members' e-mails.

That is, I'd misrepresent myself as several subscribers, for financial gain. But that's fraud, isn't it?

Is there a way to find out who's behind an e-mail address?
 

DaveKuzminski

Good idea. I know I still have one.

Well, I found all three that they've sent me so far and forwarded all of those. I think if enough are forwarded, it might cause someone to take action.
 

lindylou45

Dave,

It's a scam. I read about it on MSN. Just delete it and don't worry about it.