"Queer Personals"

baby and crumble

hey guys,

bit of a weird one, but I KEEP getting emails from queerpersonals.co.uk like this:

Hi, a friend of yours has given us your email address to invite you to join QueerPersonals.co.uk.

Feel free to sign up to day to the internets newest, and brightest online gay, lesbian, bi sexual, and transgender community site, for free.

Curious about who has referred you? Sign up now, and we will add them to your QP buddy list!

The best of it is, we are totally 100% free of charge..so why pay the dar or gay.com, for exactly the same thing you can get with us?

We are the fastest growing gay site on the net, and have lots of cute guys, online now, in the United Kingdom, Ireland, America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, All of Europe, and Canada, for you to make contact with!

To Sign up, simply vist QueerPersonals.co.uk and click on SIGN UP

Kind Regards

QueerPersonals Admin

First of all, I'm not a guy, so looking for 'cute guys' across the globe isn't going to float my boat, and second of all, it looks like a fishy email to me, and I'm just wondering if it's some kind of spam? The actual site looks vaguely legit though...Does anyone here use it? I have no interest at all about going on a dating site, since I'm taken, but it's just irritating me as to how they got my email...

You know?

bitter_lemon

its a generic mail that they send out. no big deal. i sometimes get them offering me a couple of inches extension to my penis :eek:
i don't even have one!

if you change your email password you will stop getting spam.

baby and crumble

yeah, it's just weird though because it's my college email and it just doesn't get spam, ever.

Like, ever.

Ho hum.

Asry

strong passwords consist of ones that are 6-10 characters long and contain numbers, symbols and letters, both capitals and ...non captials (what the hell are they called?).

Pedantic, I know.

Meesared

bitter_lemon wrote: »

its a generic mail that they send out. no big deal. i sometimes get them offering me a couple of inches extension to my penis :eek:
i don't even have one!

if you change your email password you will stop getting spam.

Probably not TBH, what these "spambots" do is the trawl the internet looking for email addresses put anywhere, even where you think isnt publicly visable, sometimes they take common domains and send out mails randomly hoping for a hit. Best thing to do is to use Gmail as your main email provider and use its exellent spam filter.

baby and crumble

Yeah. My college mail is a gmail (hence there's zero spam) and I kind of have to have my college mail out there as I'm a researcher and people need to reach me. It's a seriously hardcore password, so i reckon I'm ok on that score.

i was just curious if it was actually a legitimate thing or if it was just a slightly nicer spam than normal...

Thanks anyway, folks!

TylerIE

It could be legitimate in that when you sign up to some of those sites it asks you for your email password to see if any of the people you contact are existing members.

So it goes something like this. lets say someone you have exchanged emails with last month signs up to queerpersonals.
They join queerpersonals - and queerpersonals says "hey some of your friends might be here, give us your email address and password and we will compare your contacts to our membership database and if they are you can link to/see their profile". In the small print it also says "we will invite your contacts to join our site. if you dont want us to please untick here". Queerpersonals logs into their email, compares them to their database and saves them. They then send an automated email to all the contacts. Some sites offer bonuses or extra features for allowing them to do access your contacts like this.

Someone in college got royally outed when he joined ladslads and didnt realise they would do this. Hes a nice guy so I wont laugh

Meesared

ha what a way to get outed!

Chuchoter

I hate it when the internet calls me gay. Like when Facebook gives me gay related adverts, I have nothing gay on my profile Facebook! Stop with the assumptions! :p

diddlybit

crayolastereo wrote: »

I hate it when the internet calls me gay. Like when Facebook gives me gay related adverts, I have nothing gay on my profile Facebook! Stop with the assumptions! :p

I was about to say the very same thing. I have been offered so many bloody junk at this stage :mad:, curse you gay and lesbian cruises invading my FB.

Asry

ha! Mine just sends me religiously-related sex toys for women who like women, and where I can buy illegal prescription medication.

I think it got its wires crossed somewhere.

God bless you, Internet.

wonderfulname

crayolastereo wrote: »

I hate it when the internet calls me gay. Like when Facebook gives me gay related adverts, I have nothing gay on my profile Facebook! Stop with the assumptions! :p

Blame google, thats what happens when you put anything LGBT into the search engine. You can hide internet advertising with Adblocker Plus or similar.

Asry wrote: »

ha! Mine just sends me religiously-related sex toys for women who like women, and where I can buy illegal prescription medication.

I think it got its wires crossed somewhere.

God bless you, Internet.

That's fantastic!! I want to google the term to find out what the hell its on about but then again I really really don't.

Aoifums

crayolastereo wrote: »

I hate it when the internet calls me gay. Like when Facebook gives me gay related adverts, I have nothing gay on my profile Facebook! Stop with the assumptions! :p

Mine keeps trying to sell me lesbian t-shirts for Cork Pride!
I look up LGBT stuff and I look at t-shirts but I've no idea where they got the Cork thing from!

Annasopra

crayolastereo wrote: »

I hate it when the internet calls me gay. Like when Facebook gives me gay related adverts, I have nothing gay on my profile Facebook! Stop with the assumptions! :p

nothing? absolutely nothing?

rainbow kirby

Aoifums wrote: »

Mine keeps trying to sell me lesbian t-shirts for Cork Pride!
I look up LGBT stuff and I look at t-shirts but I've no idea where they got the Cork thing from!

Mine does that too - "Interested in: Women" + "Attending: Cork City Marathon" would explain that one!

Annasopra

rainbow kirby wrote: »

Mine does that too - "Interested in: Women" + "Attending: Cork City Marathon" would explain that one!

I've created Facebook ads for a politician and a fashion designer, they can be targeted at the entire country or one town or 3 towns and then you can also put in interests as well e.g. someone advertising to a lesbian audience might use words like l word, lesbian, Ellen de genres, Anna nolan, lesbian etc so the cork t shirts could have lots of phrases and could actually be specifically targeted to women in ballyfermot who like Ellen or all when in Ireland.

diddlybit

Is there anyway you could stop them catering your ads to your "interests"? As lst said someone got outed because of this kind of stuff.

It's grand if you're out, but if you're not it's a little difficult to explain all the gay-orientated ads. What do you say, "Facebook is broken?"

(Actually Facebook is broken, they are trying to sell me shoes, a business masters and a subscription to Weightwatchers. Not if hell froze over.)

Annasopra

diddlybit wrote: »

Is there anyway you could stop them catering your ads to your "interests"? As lst said someone got outed because of this kind of stuff.

It's grand if you're out, but if you're not it's a little difficult to explain all the gay-orientated ads. What do you say, "Facebook is broken?"

(Actually Facebook is broken, they are trying to sell me shoes, a business masters and a subscription to Weightwatchers. Not if hell froze over.)

I don't think you can turn ads off. I'd say they will probably start charging for ad free Facebook. I'm confused though about what you mean - you see ads when you log in - everyone else does not see what ads you see

diddlybit

Oh sorry, just when people are looking over your shoulder when you're logged on at your page. It's not often, but it happens.

wonderfulname

diddlybit wrote: »

Is there anyway you could stop them catering your ads to your "interests"? As lst said someone got outed because of this kind of stuff.

It's grand if you're out, but if you're not it's a little difficult to explain all the gay-orientated ads. What do you say, "Facebook is broken?"

(Actually Facebook is broken, they are trying to sell me shoes, a business masters and a subscription to Weightwatchers. Not if hell froze over.)

If someone is worried about websites they frequent using their contact details or facebook to advertise to friends then all they need to do is read terms and conditions and small print carefully and watch out for those little tick boxes at the bottom that usually just say things like "untick if you do not wish to receive correspondence from our partners" or similar.
If they are worried about what facebook or google ads betraying their interests to people who borrow or share their computer then Adblocker Plus is the answer. It doesn't seem to work for youtube videos but all targeted google and youtube advertising or simply advertisements aimed at certain demographics can be cut off through the privacy centre. If you don't want to delete or trawl through history every time you use certain sites or look up certain topics Chrome has an incognito window - "Pages that you view in this window won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window."

It must sound like I have a very sordid internet life, I don't, honest, I just hate intrusive adverts!

stephen_n

zoegh wrote: »

yeah, it's just weird though because it's my college email and it just doesn't get spam, ever.

Like, ever.

Ho hum.

You didn't use that email to sign up to any sites recently did you? or else it could have got harvested from someone else's contact list in a hacked account.

Chuchoter

Johnnymcg wrote: »

nothing? absolutely nothing?

I don't even have Tegan and Sara in my music.:p

diddlybit

crayolastereo wrote: »

I don't even have Tegan and Sara in my music.:p

:eek:

rainbow kirby

crayolastereo wrote: »

I don't even have Tegan and Sara in my music.:p

I don't either. *high-five*

diddlybit

rainbow kirby wrote: »

I don't either. *high-five*

:eek: In my defence, I didn't listen to them until I was dragged to their concert. They're much better live.

Chuchoter

They're cute to look at...just really nasal and annoying to listen to.:P