The peoplefinders Scam
viagra, nigerian scams, Obama paychecks, click here to check you bank account....all the good stuff flows through my inbox and spam folder. I'm sometimes having a bit of fun going through those messages, figuring out a stupid trick or two, staying up to date with "what's hot" in spam-land because spam is some sort of stock exchange trading on people fears, greed, poverty and...good old stupidity.
Spammers then are some sort of stock brokers. Stupid ones, granted, but maybe efficient on a very large scale: those dudes can't even target the proper country! I know, it doesn't fit their business model - else they'd join IAB.
One thing kept bugging me: an increasing number of messages with little bits of misdirected "personal" touches in them: "Dear Brenda" or "Dear Manouchehr" over and over again in my inbox. My first reaction was simple: WTF are Breanda and Manouchehr and why do they use my email address to subscribe to all kids of crap?
Well, I still don't know who they are but I did find out that it doesn't matter who they are. The actual assholes behind this are peoplefinders.com and their alias website advancedbackgroundchecks.com aka Mr. Robert Miller. The dude filled the websites with fake/scapped profiles and dumped loads of email addresses on each profile. My email is listed under three different persons, male and female of various ages and "located" all over USA. Beside those two websites, several searches revealed no other "public records" associating my email address with any of those persons.
Honest mistake, right? Maybe I'm jumping to the wrong conclusions? Well...no: I did try to contact them and had an exchange of emails with their staff which is dyslexic, plain stupid or, most likely, malevolent.
Their first reply to my request to remove my email address from three separate profiles which should be obvious that can't share the same email address is below:
Note that they want me to "opt-out" from something I never opted-in and that they basically want to farm even more data out of me.
It took me two more emails to state the obvious again and try to make them understand that the form they requested won't work because I can't be three persons at the same time. I also asked them to provide a different way to fix this issue because I'm not willing to send overseas snail-mail nor disclose more personal info. All I got in return is this pearl of stupidity:
They stopped all communication after this email but they did take the time to figure out my location (well...1000km or so radius) and blocked access to their website for basically the whole Romania (see screenshot below). Those profile pages continue to work just fine from any IP that's not geo-tagged as Romanian.
Someone give them a prize!
So....Mr Robert Miller is running a free online database for spammers to use. I bet he does a bit of spamming too behind this 'perfect' front-end business. His BBB profile is not exactly spotless either: 500+ complains, all reviews are negative yet it 'meets' the lax BBB accreditation gold standards.
What else is out there about peoplefinders.com? A lot, none of it any good: spam sounds a lot like scam and a lot of people unlucky enough to provide Mr. Miller with their CC details have been charged all kids of hidden fees, monthly subscriptions and such. Enjoy:
http://peoplefinders.pissedconsumer.com/
http://peoplefinders.pissedconsumer.com/peoplefinders-com-is-a-scam-do-not-use-20100827195990.html
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/peoplefinders-c38501.html
http://www.complaintsboard.com/bycompany/peoplefinderscom-a1370.html
http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.peoplefinders.com
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/directory/peoplefinders
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/directory/peoplefinders-com
What does Mr. Robert Miller do with the money he worked so hard for? Life's not cheap when you're trying to having fun! Oh, and sponsor fighters like Urijah Faber @UrijahFaber, Chad Mendes @chadmendes, TJ Dillashaw @TJDillashaw, David Mitchell @dmitchellmma, Alexis Davis @AlexisDavisMMA or Joseph Benavidez @JoeJitsu.
I'd like to believe that they all got "tricked" and don't know what's going on (even when endorsing peoplefinders on youtube) - after all, they wouldn't be the first ones used like that by crappy businesses. I asked them if they're comfortable with taking money from peoplefinders.com....none of them gave any reply. They either don't care or....money won, life is hard, blah blah blah. Great job dudes! Let your fans be ripped off by your sponsor then share the profit, eh!?!
Spammers then are some sort of stock brokers. Stupid ones, granted, but maybe efficient on a very large scale: those dudes can't even target the proper country! I know, it doesn't fit their business model - else they'd join IAB.
One thing kept bugging me: an increasing number of messages with little bits of misdirected "personal" touches in them: "Dear Brenda" or "Dear Manouchehr" over and over again in my inbox. My first reaction was simple: WTF are Breanda and Manouchehr and why do they use my email address to subscribe to all kids of crap?
Well, I still don't know who they are but I did find out that it doesn't matter who they are. The actual assholes behind this are peoplefinders.com and their alias website advancedbackgroundchecks.com aka Mr. Robert Miller. The dude filled the websites with fake/scapped profiles and dumped loads of email addresses on each profile. My email is listed under three different persons, male and female of various ages and "located" all over USA. Beside those two websites, several searches revealed no other "public records" associating my email address with any of those persons.
Honest mistake, right? Maybe I'm jumping to the wrong conclusions? Well...no: I did try to contact them and had an exchange of emails with their staff which is dyslexic, plain stupid or, most likely, malevolent.
Their first reply to my request to remove my email address from three separate profiles which should be obvious that can't share the same email address is below:
It took me two more emails to state the obvious again and try to make them understand that the form they requested won't work because I can't be three persons at the same time. I also asked them to provide a different way to fix this issue because I'm not willing to send overseas snail-mail nor disclose more personal info. All I got in return is this pearl of stupidity:
Someone give them a prize!
So....Mr Robert Miller is running a free online database for spammers to use. I bet he does a bit of spamming too behind this 'perfect' front-end business. His BBB profile is not exactly spotless either: 500+ complains, all reviews are negative yet it 'meets' the lax BBB accreditation gold standards.
What else is out there about peoplefinders.com? A lot, none of it any good: spam sounds a lot like scam and a lot of people unlucky enough to provide Mr. Miller with their CC details have been charged all kids of hidden fees, monthly subscriptions and such. Enjoy:
http://peoplefinders.pissedconsumer.com/
http://peoplefinders.pissedconsumer.com/peoplefinders-com-is-a-scam-do-not-use-20100827195990.html
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/peoplefinders-c38501.html
http://www.complaintsboard.com/bycompany/peoplefinderscom-a1370.html
http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.peoplefinders.com
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/directory/peoplefinders
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/directory/peoplefinders-com
What does Mr. Robert Miller do with the money he worked so hard for? Life's not cheap when you're trying to having fun! Oh, and sponsor fighters like Urijah Faber @UrijahFaber, Chad Mendes @chadmendes, TJ Dillashaw @TJDillashaw, David Mitchell @dmitchellmma, Alexis Davis @AlexisDavisMMA or Joseph Benavidez @JoeJitsu.
I'd like to believe that they all got "tricked" and don't know what's going on (even when endorsing peoplefinders on youtube) - after all, they wouldn't be the first ones used like that by crappy businesses. I asked them if they're comfortable with taking money from peoplefinders.com....none of them gave any reply. They either don't care or....money won, life is hard, blah blah blah. Great job dudes! Let your fans be ripped off by your sponsor then share the profit, eh!?!
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