Reunion.com It's a PHISHING scam, much worse than merely SPAM! Santa Monica California
This company should be banned from the Internet. Here's what happened to me last week. First of all, let me explain that I have been a member of Classmates.com for about 5 years, and it is a very reputable site that does nothing illegal or objectionable.
So when I got an e-mail about Reunion.com in my Hotmail Inbox, I thought it was similar. WRONG! I signed up for the free service, and started typing information into my "Profile", which was quite inclusive, although you could pick and choose what information to give. Here's what they did: the idea is to keep you online long enough for them to get into your e-mail account and literally STEAL your entire CONTACTS LIST!
How do I know? Luckily, two of my best friends were online at the time, and one sent an e-mail, and one called me on the phone, asking me "what's up with this invitation to join me on Reunion.com?" I hadn't been on the site for more than 10 minutes and they had already hacked my e-mail!
Here's what I did: I immediately deleted all the information I had typed in, logged out, and left the site, and my Firefox preferences prompted me to remove all my personal information from the previous session. It was too late, unfortunately, so I immediately contacted every single person on my Contacts List with a note of apology and explanation that I had been inadvertently, innocently been raided by this disgusting company before I had even finished my profile, and that in no way had I given them permission to contact my friends. I told every person to report the e-mail that they had received as a "Phishing Scam" and then put the original message into their Junk Folder. and delete it.
(For those of you who don't know what Phishing is, it's a devious and much more effective cyber variation on the old "fishing expedition" trick, wherein someone asks you a lot of personal questions in order to get something they want: your name, address, even your social security number, and then on to your whole ID.) Hotmail allows you to report any suspiciious e-mail as a Phishing Scam; I don't know about other sites, but OL makes it very difficult, it seems you can only put it in Spam,which still allows the perp to continue scamming other innocent people.
Anyway, after I did that, I went back into Reunion.com, and sure enough, all my info was still there. I searched around for a way to cancel my membership, and sure enough, the only way is to call the toll free number given, be put on hold forever, and only that after you navigate your way through endless prompts. I am so enraged at these people there is no way to express it. Since my info's been out there, and even if my membership's canceled, a whole lot of other people have it, I've been getting a lot of junk mail about "guess who's looking for you", "guess who's got a crush on you," etc. etc. I trash them all.
This definitely should be a matter for the FCC, since they are using the Internet to steal people's information nationwide, maybe even worldwide. Don't fall for it under any circumstances. Join (((competitor's name redacted)))instead: you'll be glad you did.
Mary Jane
OXFORD, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.
CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report.
3 Updates & Rebuttals
Lex
Miami,Florida,
U.S.A.
Liars and Trollers
#4Consumer Comment
Sat, November 01, 2008
I am a dual national and was not even living in USA for most of my life. A full family and then some used my social security number and got rentals, credit cards etc with my social security card and variations of my name.
I had to get a lawyer to fight it when I moved back a few years ago and then thought all was done. It had been some 10 years since the last use of this info as the credit had long since gone bad (and I was a mere teenager then on another continent!). Long story short my lawyer advised me to periodically check the internet and my credit reports.
IT WAS my understanding that Reunion.com was a voluntary "sign-up" program. IT IS NOT. They not only used names of people who used my social security card illegaly but listed them as my relatives. I called and explained this and also asked how would they possibly get this if they did not use third party databases and they refused to do anything to help. I urged them to contact the social security department, my lawyer, and the properties they had these people listed under--they refused.
Some Eastern European girl rudely discarded my complaint.
I am now trying to get E-trust to fix it and I WILL go to court if I have to.
Sherry
Des Moines,Iowa,
U.S.A.
You Let Them "Hack" Your Account
#4Consumer Comment
Tue, July 08, 2008
I was going to sign up at Reunion.com as well. But I caught the part where it asks you to sign in to your Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. email account with your email account password so they can contact your list of contacts.
Unfortunately you freely gave Reunion.com your email password when you signed in to your email account from that page.
I am sorry this happened to you and it is a dirty rotten scamming trick if you aren't paying very close attention to what you are doing.
I agree about the fake profiles. It won't let you read a profile unless you join, but you can search profiles and what comes up, and you can partially see behind the box telling you that you need to join to actually read the profile is the sort of information that you can find places like PeopleSearch, etc, which also gives you partial information then requires you to pay a fee in hopes of getting the full information.
There is no gaurantee that the person you searched for has even placed a profile on Reunion.com. Chances are they haven't and you are just wasting your money.
Better to avoid Reunion.com. What a rip off.
Helene
Elgin,Illinois,
U.S.A.
They Rip Off your Time, E-Mail space, even for FICTITIOUS PERSONS!
#4Consumer Comment
Mon, July 07, 2008
Everything you say here is true,true,true!
I was curious to try this because there is a guy I have been trying to find since high school but I am very leery of identity theft since it happened to me once and it took years before the matter was resolved!
So I made up a fictitious name and submitted it with my high school and year of graduation just to see what would happen and it worked. It worked very,very well!
my mailbox contains a minimum of 15 SPAM MAILS PER DAY for the fictitious person.
I have written to them and told them to STOP sending the SPAM because the person never existed but it continues.
It is as bad as that e-harmony dating SCAM that keeps sending you spam for all these people who don't exist ( at least for relationships) and have no idea how their names got on the list because I managed to hunt down three of them. One was happily married, the other one was gay and the other one had been deceased for at least two years.
So I just zap them out since everytime I block the address, they figure out a way around it.
I HATE THESE PEOPLE. IT RIPS OFF MY TIME DELETING THEIR ****!