Complaint Review: Adult Friend Finder - Palo Alto California

Missy, I've been a member of AFF for nine years now. I've been a paying member and a standard member. I've never had my card billed for anything I didn't want. But you say something interesting. You say you were getting email from men asking for sex. How? For years now, the site has used an internal mail program. To see the mail from people who write to you, you have to sign into the site and go to your mailbox. Mail from members hasn't been delivered to your external mail since about 2003. All I get is mail telling me I have a private message from someone and to sign into the site to read it. If you were getting mail from their regular email address, well, I hate to tell you this, but you really pissed off someone you know. An ex-friend or boyfriend. Someone who set up the account and went into the chat rooms and spammed them with your email. The site takes down fraud profiles regularly. You have to talk to the abuse department and have them put a tag on the profile to make sure the person who is out to get you can't have the profile turned back on. Trust me, I've had this done to people on the site. And they do have report this profile for abuse. At the bottom of the page. If this is still going on, have your lawyer get a court order to subpoena information on that handle. Trust me, the IP address is recorded when you sign up. The IP address you use to access the site is recorded every time you sign on. You need a court order to find out who is doing this to you. It's against Federal law to just hand out this information. Then you can take legal action against the person who created the profile to harass you.

They certainly are not going to remove the site - the website is their business, but they can certainly remove a member profile from their system. I've had my profile removed a few times over the last 6 years. Still, I don't understand how you were charged anything. I suspect that you joined so that you could search for the profile that's supposed to contain your picture - it wasn't necessary to do that. If you had called them before going to the site, they could have set up a temporary profile (for a day or so) so you could search for the profile that contains your pictures. After you find the profile (and write down the complete profile name) you could have called them, identified the profile by name, and they would have informed you as to what they would need in writing from you before they delete the offending profile. Sometimes users copy photos and videos to use on a fraudulent member profile. The new trend seems to be to copy the video from a live webcam broadcast and then post that video as an intro video on another profile. This is a type of fraud and is a violation of the TOS - which AFF is quick to act on when someone tells them of it. When these fraudulent profiles are properly identified as fraudulent, AFF is very quick to delete the profile. BTW, they have many links throughout the website for identifying abuse of photos or videos so that the frauds may be researched and purged from the system.

They certainly are not going to remove the site - the website is their business, but they can certainly remove a member profile from their system. I've had my profile removed a few times over the last 6 years. Still, I don't understand how you were charged anything. I suspect that you joined so that you could search for the profile that's supposed to contain your picture - it wasn't necessary to do that. If you had called them before going to the site, they could have set up a temporary profile (for a day or so) so you could search for the profile that contains your pictures. After you find the profile (and write down the complete profile name) you could have called them, identified the profile by name, and they would have informed you as to what they would need in writing from you before they delete the offending profile. Sometimes users copy photos and videos to use on a fraudulent member profile. The new trend seems to be to copy the video from a live webcam broadcast and then post that video as an intro video on another profile. This is a type of fraud and is a violation of the TOS - which AFF is quick to act on when someone tells them of it. When these fraudulent profiles are properly identified as fraudulent, AFF is very quick to delete the profile. BTW, they have many links throughout the website for identifying abuse of photos or videos so that the frauds may be researched and purged from the system.

They certainly are not going to remove the site - the website is their business, but they can certainly remove a member profile from their system. I've had my profile removed a few times over the last 6 years. Still, I don't understand how you were charged anything. I suspect that you joined so that you could search for the profile that's supposed to contain your picture - it wasn't necessary to do that. If you had called them before going to the site, they could have set up a temporary profile (for a day or so) so you could search for the profile that contains your pictures. After you find the profile (and write down the complete profile name) you could have called them, identified the profile by name, and they would have informed you as to what they would need in writing from you before they delete the offending profile. Sometimes users copy photos and videos to use on a fraudulent member profile. The new trend seems to be to copy the video from a live webcam broadcast and then post that video as an intro video on another profile. This is a type of fraud and is a violation of the TOS - which AFF is quick to act on when someone tells them of it. When these fraudulent profiles are properly identified as fraudulent, AFF is very quick to delete the profile. BTW, they have many links throughout the website for identifying abuse of photos or videos so that the frauds may be researched and purged from the system.

Responding to the post "Hard to Believe". A letter was sent to them by my lawyer requesting the profile to be taken down. I received no response. This was followed up by a phone call from my lawyer in which they stated as I wrote before "they did not have the technology to remove the site". I wish it would have been that easy.

I've been an AFF gold member on and off for over 6 years. I've never had a problem with removing my profile the times I discontinue the service. They certainly can remove the profile. Further, you do not get charged unless you decide to join as a silver or gold member - standard member account is free. What I suspect happened: I suspect someone who doesn't like you copied your myspace photos and opened a standard membership to set up the profile in question. It's very easy to grab photos and videos. A program called "snagit" does a great job at this. A standard membership is free and yes, anyone can open a standard membership claiming to be anyone. I could open a standard membership claiming to be President Bush (there's a thought! LOL!) What to do: I would suggest you send them a certified letter verifying who you are (include a photo) and request the profile be removed because it is fraudulent - not set up by you. They can do this and most likely will do this. You can't remove it because you didn't set up the account - the person who set up the account has a password to edit or remove the account. They need to be sure you are who you claim to be before they manually delete it. So, send them a letter with some sort of ID (photocopy) and ask them to remove it - also, include the "name" of the profile. I'll will be very surprised if they don't comply. Caution on the internet: Never (even on myspace) post any picture or video on the internet that you don't want made public to the entire world, including your children or future grandkids and so forth. Anything you post on the internet can be copied by anyone else with the proper software. Snagit is just one of many programs available for doing this.