HornyMatches - HornyMatches.com ripoff Fraudulent Profiles and messages Internet
This was my first(and most likely last) trial with online dating. I signed up for the site, entered all of the information in my profile, and did a week or two of the free period. I received a few responses(although not the deluge that other scamming sites seem to give), and decided to go for the 1 month of Silver membership for $20.
Well, I had a few messages go back and forth, but they didn't really seem to go anywhere. The women would right back after several days or a week, but only a few sentences that were poorly-worded and seemed jotted down in less than a minute. I got really suspicious when a woman told me at one time that she had heard enough about me, and wanted me to ask a few questions about her. Well I did, and then she responded that she wanted to hear more about me.....
I decided to not renew, figuring it was all a scam. Searching online, there's very little controversy about this site in comparison to a few like Match.com or True.com, however, there's still plenty of fraud going on. Although you don't get a massive amount of fake emails, you seem to get an very large amount of people "viewing your profile", even though most don't live anywhere near you. Also, how can I have that many people checking me out when I've gone weeks or months at a time without logging in?
Looking at the women in my area, most seem to have been on for awhile. If the Male to female ratio is like 7:1(or probably worse), what are the odds they would still be on this long?
Here's the kicker- most of the information in the profiles seems to be randomly generated from various programs and templates. There are all kinds of cities listed that seem to be taken off a database list, as no one would report their address as such. For example, Jackson(Greater Metropolitan Area), or Philliptown(Old Township). Also, there are NUMEROUS discrepancies with the title/subject, the photo, and the profile. Oftentimes, the cities and states don't match up remotely close, the ages listed in the subject are a few years older/younger than the actual data, a picture of a well-endowed woman claims to have an A-cup, etc. Also, it seems like a good deal of them are deliberately designed to lure men instead of being real. For example, how many hot 24-year olds are stuck in a boring marriage where their husband is always away on business and never pays attention to them, or they're tired of dealing with little boys and want a REAL man. There are also a surprising number of women who are curious about having sex with another woman, even though they've never tried it before.
I'm guessing that there's a number of different games going on. One, the subject/handle names are written by employees, the picture is attached, and doesn't always match(especially weight, race, or obvious age!), and the profile is either quickly written by an employee, copied from another person's legitimate profile, or created using a computer program with key phrases.
I did happen to find one example where I saw two different profile handles with the exact same photo.
My guess is that they are scamming you as much as the bigger sites, but don't have the resources to send you all of the fake emails those sites have. Either that, or they're trying to cover their tracks better.
Joshua
Columbus, Ohio
U.S.A.
11 Updates & Rebuttals
T. Fenner
Euless,Texas,
U.S.A.
I followed the trail...here are relevant FACTS from my own personal experience
#12Consumer Comment
Fri, June 12, 2009
I signed on with adultfriendfinder.com about two weeks ago (yes, I know, it was a desperate and sad move). I responded to one of the standard member listings that I saw, an attractive young lady supposedly from the north texas area. She responeded to one of my adultfriendfinder.com emails (AFF) and casually suggested that i contact her at her hotmail address, but it was "disguised" in the AFF email (e.g. h0,tm^il, or "the mail that is hot"). Of course I knew that she was doing this to avoid the 2x email exchange minimum set forth by AFF, but I responded to her email from my yahoo account anyway. The response was not from a template, but a real person. This person responded to me in a very real way, and asked whether or not I was having any success with AFF, and to try datematenight.com, and to look up her handle on that site, which I did. And then a really stupid thing happened...I clicked on the link and it took me to hornymatches.com. I thought to myself, "now wait a minute here, this isn't datematenight.com..." But, you guessed it, I went ahead with it anyway, filled out a profile, uploaded some pictures...and then I stopped myself. I did not pay to upgrade to the silver or gold memberships, which are required to communicate with other members. I noticed the year "2004" at the bottom of the page. Hey...it's 2009 now. That was my 3rd red alarm, and the first that I took heed to. The second? My AFF links in my favorites were deleted from my browser. You see, the thing is, I was just there a minute before I started all of this. This wonderful site downloaded a trojan rootkit into my browser, wonderfully titled, "PartnerBHO." Yes, that's right folks, even the good old SpyBot Search and Destroy couldn't wipe this bad boy out on it's own. I had to go into regedit.exe and manually delete some 10 or so keys and subkeys from the registry. If you have this nasty little booger on your computer after running SpyBot, and you will if you have been using hornymatches.com, then go to SpyBot's site and get the instructions from there. By the way, hm.com does not use what is known as a "CA authority," or more properly a certificate authority, to verify it's transactions. That's what stopped me the second time from signing up. Granted, there have been some women on there who seem about 99% legitimate, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to let this site rip me off...yet anyway. I'm doing the best I can. I do not work for any of these companies by the way, I'm just a simple guy, looking for some female companionship. Does that make me a bad guy, gee, I sure do hope not. As for the beautiful young lady that nearly scammed me into signing up for a website that was last updated five years ago, and looks like something from about ten years ago, well, she's changed her name at least three times, and moved twice on AFF. She'll always have a special place in my heart as my very first near miss scam attack on a dating website...precious memories that I will never forget. Goodnight everyone.
Pennsylvania Kid
Tampa,Florida,
U.S.A.
Hornymatches has been worth the money to me
#12Consumer Comment
Sun, January 20, 2008
I enjoy meeting people from around the country when I travel.
I have met at least 40 people from HornyMatches.com and know others have also liked the site.
Obviously some ads are fake. Many are quite real and exactly as advertised.
Kenneth
Birmingham,Alabama,
U.S.A.
Not a total RipOff
#12Consumer Comment
Sun, December 31, 2006
I agree there are some people on HornyMatches and other sites trying to scam people out of their hard earned cash. But that is not the full scope of these sites. I have met several people in person that I talked to on HorneyMatches first.
I have received some of these fake emails and profiles. They try to get you to give them your email address rather than talk to you via the sites messeging service. HornyMatches, AdultFriendFinder and several others have rules (stated in the TOS Agreement)against giving out your personal contact info on the site until you have messeged the individual at least 2x both ways. That way you can make certain it is a real person before they can scam you via your email. I've also seen several warnings about scams with examples throughout these sites.
I am not a representative, employee or have any affiliation with HornyMatches other than being a gold membership subscriber. There are people who use the site to run scams and they get banned when they get caught or reported with proof. (I've reported 2 such cases and they are both gone) The site does work though. You just need to make your profile appealing. No one is going to reply or initiate contact unless they are interested. Submit a photo and responses almost double. I tweek my profile almost weekly - it's basically advertising yourself. All I'm saying is the site is safe, but not free of scammers and the like. You can't get away from that online. You just gotta be cautious. Use your gut. If it feels like a scam - leave it alone.
Kenneth
Birmingham,Alabama,
U.S.A.
Not a total RipOff
#12Consumer Comment
Sun, December 31, 2006
I agree there are some people on HornyMatches and other sites trying to scam people out of their hard earned cash. But that is not the full scope of these sites. I have met several people in person that I talked to on HorneyMatches first.
I have received some of these fake emails and profiles. They try to get you to give them your email address rather than talk to you via the sites messeging service. HornyMatches, AdultFriendFinder and several others have rules (stated in the TOS Agreement)against giving out your personal contact info on the site until you have messeged the individual at least 2x both ways. That way you can make certain it is a real person before they can scam you via your email. I've also seen several warnings about scams with examples throughout these sites.
I am not a representative, employee or have any affiliation with HornyMatches other than being a gold membership subscriber. There are people who use the site to run scams and they get banned when they get caught or reported with proof. (I've reported 2 such cases and they are both gone) The site does work though. You just need to make your profile appealing. No one is going to reply or initiate contact unless they are interested. Submit a photo and responses almost double. I tweek my profile almost weekly - it's basically advertising yourself. All I'm saying is the site is safe, but not free of scammers and the like. You can't get away from that online. You just gotta be cautious. Use your gut. If it feels like a scam - leave it alone.
Kenneth
Birmingham,Alabama,
U.S.A.
Not a total RipOff
#12Consumer Comment
Sun, December 31, 2006
I agree there are some people on HornyMatches and other sites trying to scam people out of their hard earned cash. But that is not the full scope of these sites. I have met several people in person that I talked to on HorneyMatches first.
I have received some of these fake emails and profiles. They try to get you to give them your email address rather than talk to you via the sites messeging service. HornyMatches, AdultFriendFinder and several others have rules (stated in the TOS Agreement)against giving out your personal contact info on the site until you have messeged the individual at least 2x both ways. That way you can make certain it is a real person before they can scam you via your email. I've also seen several warnings about scams with examples throughout these sites.
I am not a representative, employee or have any affiliation with HornyMatches other than being a gold membership subscriber. There are people who use the site to run scams and they get banned when they get caught or reported with proof. (I've reported 2 such cases and they are both gone) The site does work though. You just need to make your profile appealing. No one is going to reply or initiate contact unless they are interested. Submit a photo and responses almost double. I tweek my profile almost weekly - it's basically advertising yourself. All I'm saying is the site is safe, but not free of scammers and the like. You can't get away from that online. You just gotta be cautious. Use your gut. If it feels like a scam - leave it alone.
Kenneth
Birmingham,Alabama,
U.S.A.
Not a total RipOff
#12Consumer Comment
Sun, December 31, 2006
I agree there are some people on HornyMatches and other sites trying to scam people out of their hard earned cash. But that is not the full scope of these sites. I have met several people in person that I talked to on HorneyMatches first.
I have received some of these fake emails and profiles. They try to get you to give them your email address rather than talk to you via the sites messeging service. HornyMatches, AdultFriendFinder and several others have rules (stated in the TOS Agreement)against giving out your personal contact info on the site until you have messeged the individual at least 2x both ways. That way you can make certain it is a real person before they can scam you via your email. I've also seen several warnings about scams with examples throughout these sites.
I am not a representative, employee or have any affiliation with HornyMatches other than being a gold membership subscriber. There are people who use the site to run scams and they get banned when they get caught or reported with proof. (I've reported 2 such cases and they are both gone) The site does work though. You just need to make your profile appealing. No one is going to reply or initiate contact unless they are interested. Submit a photo and responses almost double. I tweek my profile almost weekly - it's basically advertising yourself. All I'm saying is the site is safe, but not free of scammers and the like. You can't get away from that online. You just gotta be cautious. Use your gut. If it feels like a scam - leave it alone.
D
Cleveland,Ohio,
U.S.A.
Ohio Or Texas?
#12Consumer Suggestion
Thu, November 23, 2006
I agree with the other postings. I received numerous winks and one in particular was noteworthy. According to the profilef she lived in Ohio 10 miles form me. A few days later I responded to her wink adn then her location had changed to Texas.
Rick
Flint,,Texas,
U.S.A.
It's all in the name.
#12Consumer Comment
Sun, August 13, 2006
Joshua,
You may be better off going to a few local bars or clubs in your area, where the women possibly are already intoxicated. Your better off dealing with a drunk and irate woman in your own backyard, rather than thousands of miles away. Think of all the money you would be saving, not to mention the wear and tear on your heart!
Gerry
Clarksburg,West Virginia,
U.S.A.
It just takes common sense
#12Consumer Suggestion
Sat, August 12, 2006
Most sites use proceedures to insure the privacy of their customers, like making you pay to contact other customers. The problem I've incountered is when you sing up for most of them on their free zone they flood you with a bunch of e-mails from young girls that want to meet you tonight and have sex with you and have never talked to you before and don't know what you even look like. How big a fool do they think this 48 year old is?
Legitamate sites don't send out that kind of junk to the people that they hope to keep around for awhile. If you sign up for the free zone and within a matter of days of even in some case's hours you start getting that sort of junk, run like hell. Let your bid head do the thinking and you won't get ripped off.
Thomas
Anderson,South Carolina,
U.S.A.
I do not see any problems or ripoffs here....
#12Consumer Comment
Thu, July 27, 2006
The site is called "HornyMatches.com" and you got 'screwed'. Where is your problem?
Marc
Makaha,Hawaii,
U.S.A.
They are scams.
#12Consumer Comment
Thu, July 27, 2006
I know someone that does it. She switches from dating lines to porn depending on which phone rings or e-mail comes in. The rest of the time she makes calls for a collection agency. It's a bunch of fat rejects, usually women waiting for "their man" to be released from prison, druggies, or alcoholics sitting in their apartment or in a back room someplace chain-smoking, while writing from scripts while laughing at you. Keep at it long enough and they will have your identity, credit card numbers, and then you're in for a rough ride. They count on you being too humiliated to fight them, and you'll get little sympathy from your creditors or anyone else..