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The Shady Business Practices of Classmates.com
eldavojohn writes ""Some of your classmates are trying to contact you!" reads one e-mail. Attempts to remove yourself from the mailing list may only result in more mailings from the site of ill repute. Well, Ars Techica brings us news of a suit against Classmates.com. You don't need to look far for anti-classmates.com sentiment spreading like wild fire across the tubes." Good next target: ads that say "you've already won" some expensive toy.
"Some of your classmates are trying to contact you!"
Does this mean they aren't? I'll just lay down and cry!
Fortunately my Gmail spam filter hides these e-mails for me.
-ML
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
And they'll never get anything from me. Hell, if I wanted to (not that I do) I could simply go to the website of the college I graduated from and look up the contact information of other alumni who have registered there. Some universities, like Harvard, offer lifetime e-mail addresses, etc. for alumni. There's a whole post.harvard.edu domain just for alumni there. Even my high school keeps track of alumni and has mailing lists, etc. available. I've never gotten spammed by classmates.com and I wouldn't bother visiting if I did. I'll just go straight to my schools websites.
I'm sure this is already illegal. I've never seen such an ad. Perhaps you are thinking "you may already have won," but I don't see why that should be illegal.
Currently hooked on AMP
Why use Classmates.com when you have Myspace.com or Facebook.com
Seems to be the best way (For me at least) to stay in touch with old High School pals.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
OUTCLASS classmates.com. "F" them...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Flash banner instructs me that I should go to specsavers. I did, in fact, go to specsavers several years ago, where I purchased the spectacles I now look through, if not the actual lenses.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Maybe Comcast will start charging less now for their internet if Classmates.com goes out of business, what with the huge decrease in used bandwidth thanks to the absence of these God-forsaken ads.
Oh, nevermind, we're talking about Comcast here.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
When I see "One of your classmates wants to contact you!" I just say to myself "If they're someone I wanted to keep contact with, they would know how to get ahold of me."
I also get a lot of those Crushmail...
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
The sad thing is how surprising it is to see classmates.com being taken to task. I've reached the point where I hear of an organization sending unsolicited lies to people in order to trick them and flood them with advertising, and I think nothing of it. It's the way he world works - but maybe it doesn't have to be the way the world works.
"Which one of your former classmates is doing hardcore pr0n now? Find out!"
Reminds me of that 4chan motivational poster, I think they called it "expectations," showing the yearbook photo of a girl and her "what I want to be when I grow up" quote with a close-up of her a few years later taking a facial on some gonzo pr0n shoot. Funny in a "yikes, not really" sort of way.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
i still owe three or four of them money...
classmates.com aren't a collection agency for them...
guess it's not that bad.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
OK, bla bla bla, social networking, bla. Classmates.com, facebook, myspace, and everything else like it exist for two purposes: Selling advertising, and collecting aggregate data. We all know this. All pretense of "keeping in touch" is nothing more than the carrot to collect your information. No big deal, although it does bear repeating now and then.
However, the people behind classmates.com have gone one step farther--they're actively lying to get people to (a) sign up, and (b) pay for a "premium" membership. This is absolutely clear fraud on their part, and I hope they get kicked to the curb for it. Being a sleazy company operating within the law just wasn't enough for them.
Hopefully "eCrush" is next. The fact that they keep getting in trouble and keep popping back up with the same crap is reason enough to throw them in jail.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Damn! Wish I had thought of it. As a baby-boomer who only emigrated to the U.S. in 2001, I thought it hilarious when I got these emails, Guess us Brits are just not litigious enough.
Enlightenment? It's just a flush in the pan.
Quite some time ago I browsed the site, and found contacts there to several long-lost friends and acquaintances.
In order to contact them cold, I had to buy a membership, which I did (yeah, my stupid).
Of course having signed up and provided my email address, I was immediately inundated with hundreds of unsolicited offers for 'penis growth factor' and get rich quick schemes & etc... along with many messages which claimed an old buddy was trying to contact me, and all I need to do was buy a membership (which I already had).
I never heard back from anyone I tried to contact through Classmates.
And I never heard from anyone else who tried to contact me through Classmates.
After a while I wrote it off as a learning experience. Doesn't surprise me at all to see the organization is being slammed and sued... just another on-line shyster.
We found a bill on our credit card statement from some company. We called them, and they claimed that we signed up through Classmates.com. We never actually received ANYTHING from this company except a charge on our credit card. No emails, no snail mails, no services, nothing. Classmates tried to claim that by clicking some button, my wife was authorizing them to send her credit card information to this 3rd party. Anybody else think that a single-click, deceptively labeled, is adequate for disclosing credit card information? If there IS a class-action lawsuit against them, I want in on it. No joke.
If you need a website to keep in touch with your "friends" you may need to seriously re-evaluate your friendships.
Nothing can replace real-life dating or drinking a beer and watching a game with your friends. It's also nice to get your kids and your friend's kids playing together in real life.
Myspace, facebook, classmates, twitter - they are all crap and can not replace face to face interactions with humans.
And to those that say "but, but, but....they are great for keeping in touch with distant friends" - ever heard of email? And while you are at it - try meeting some new friends close to you - it isn't hard.
The web is making all of us lazy when it comes to personal relationships. I don't care if you are the CEO of a multinational firm or a mother of 10; make time - it's worth it.
-ted
Do you mean 60+?
I ask because I'm in the 30+ group and my parents and aunts and uncles are on Facebook. It's never been an "OMG PONIES!" kind of place (with the exception of folks who have "OMG PONIES!" types of friends) so I'm not really sure where you got that "first impression".
Classmates could have been the first myspace/facebook (they had a jump on the market). Instead they went the "pay us" subscription route, forever ensuring that they would be a fringe player at best (rendering them worthless in a field where mass participation is so essential). Their advertising scams are just a sign of their continued cluelessness and a reminder of their lack of foresight and failure.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
... but I've left instructions there to look for me elsewhere, since classmates.com wants money for anything useful.
If all the other social networking sites can do it for free, why use classmates.com?
Go check out Facebook. You might be surprised. Virtually everyone I know with a computer uses Facebook - more than half of my friends on FB are over 25.
So they're 26,27, and some old farts who are 28?
LinkLn is the site for professionals.
BTW, I have neither. I do not want my information all over the internet.
I'll be curious to see what you young'ins reap with all this in a few years.
I graduated from High School at the Arizona State Prison. Wonder what the guys are doing now??
....all your classmates used to bully you and genuinely are trying to contact you after all these years. Or if someone remembered you owed them money and finally found a way to track your ass down.
He's a stand-up comedian/in a band and wants an easy way to compile a fan base?
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Before I finally got fed up and opted out of any contact from them Classmates always said there were 24 people looking to reconnect with me or viewed my profile or some nonsense like that. In every message from them. So either they were lying or there were 24 people with nothing else to do but read my sparse and uninteresting profile.
I'm guessing Classmates was lying to me.
For a while it was a good thing. But now LinkedIn is my medium of choice since it is more relevant than people I haven't seen in 25 years and am glad for it.
I'll need to see if the class action suit is worthwhile or just another one where all the money goes to to the lawyers and the plantiffs get a year's worth of Gold membership.
Not always true. I've had numbers I never gave charged by companies that had past business relations with me. They simply called up MasterCard (or whatever they did), asked for the new number, and got to charge me without my permission. I know this because my card was hacked and replaced with a new number, which I never gave them.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I don't care to keep in touch with everyone I've ever met in my life.
I do, however, have contact information on everyone I choose to keep in touch with.
It's an amazingly simple process.....but I'm sure some PHP/Ruby/MySQL jockey will tell me there is a better way. All I have to do is sign-up, pay some money, and endure some flash ads.
No thanks.
-ted
As best I can tell, the number of people trying to contact you is an aggregate of all the users who wanted to view additional information about you--the type of information only paid users can post. I've watched my number of people who want to connect with me climb over the years.
I would completely pull out of the site, but it is, perhaps my best shot at figuring out when my 20-year reunion will be held next year (since I now live far from my old home).
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
reunion.com
Same misleading type of message, but I've apparently gotten signed up for them by some chucklehead can't type his own gmail address. The first email I got from them said "confirm your membership" which of course I didn't. And big surprise, there's nothing in that email that will let me say "hey, you've got the wrong man." (I spell my name . . . Danger). And even though I didn't confirm "my" membership, I still got additional email with "1 Search for Joe Doaks - Find Out Who!"
Thank $DIETY for gmail's instantly trainable spam filter.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Indeed, we should all get off your lawn.
Nevermind the fact that everything you said could (and was) said about email 10 years ago. It's almost like you became an old man when it was past being cool to do so, haha.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Mostly negative stuff about classmates here; and I don't disagree with the lawsuit, which is about tactics, not content. But let me tell you a couple of stories about how classmates contributed positively to a couple of situations.
I had a colleague who told me an intriguing and sorrowful story. She got pregnant during her very first sexual experience. Her mother was in denial until the baby started kicking. Her mother then proceeded to put her daughter in an apartment in a nearby city, cut her red hair and dye it black, and wait for the baby to come to term. It was born and whisked away for adoption before my colleague laid eyes on it. (What a mother, eh?) The father was never informed and told my colleague was spending the semester overseas. Mother arranged letters to be sent from France until they dwindled to nothing. I was told this story maybe 20 years ago, and the thing is, I knew the father slightly because I knew I had see a picture of him on the swim team in my annual, who had gone to my high school (along with Ted Bundy). About 5 years ago my colleague, through her own research, found her long-lost son. We decided to try to contact the father. I went through classmates.com and found him. My colleague paid for my gold membership for a year. I contacted the father via email, set up a meeting, and he and my colleague were re-united. He was, of course, very surprised to know he had a grown son. Father and son got into contact, and, for better or worse, both natural parents are in contact with their son. Naturally, they do not replace the 'real' family who raised the kid, but it certainly expanded all their lives. I didn't re-up with Classmates. I get an email once in awhile, but it's certainly nothing overwhelming or particularly bothersome.
The second thing classmates has allowed me to do is researh in genealogy. A few of us were into DNA analysis of the family (for our own reasons) going back to the late 1700's when our ancestor in question lived. His name was Jeremiah Pack and we wanted to know his ethnic background along with that of his wife. We found direct descendents of Jeremiah pretty readily, but finding direct descendents of his wife was a daunting task because surnames of females change every generation. After several years of research we finally found a 4th cousin or so who had a complete chart with names. I was able to go onto classmates.com and find the names, and write to the likely suspects. I found a couple of women who were direct descendents of Jeremaih's wife through the female lines, therefore their MtDNA was a match. We were able to do the testing and come to a suitable conclusion. This is not as 'heart-rending' a story as the first one, but I have to tell you it settled a generations-old mystery and legend for our families.
In both cases, the positive conclusions would not have been possible without classmates.com. That doesn't forgive their questionable marketing tactics, but let's not claim the service has no value. It depends on what you are looking for.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
AS part of my job, I get calls from angry card holders who've have been billed fraudulently by websites such as this one.
Another scam is when websites require a CC for their "Free Trial" and all you have to do is cancel before 30 days so you don't get billed. Well, in most cases, folks who do cancel somehow have their cancellation "lost" or "never received" by the company. And those are the folks who actually remembered to cancel on time. Unfortunately, there wasn't much the CC company would do for them. Call your own company and see - some will back their card holders a bit more than others. Credit Unions are the best in my experience. Big monster mega banks are the worst.
Never give a CC for a "Free Trial". Take your business elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I knew an operator that counted on most people forgetting and then when they get their bill the following month, canceling in writing, and then being billed for another month because they were already in a second billing period. He made at least 2 months of revenues off of those people. He was actually honest. When you canceled, he canceled you.
And for the very few legitimate businesses out there that use that technique; well, find another method to limit free trials.
If you do have a problem with those cheating assholes, file a complaint with your State's Attorney General's office of consumer affairs, your bank, the FTC, and if your bank gives you a hassle, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will kick their ass. The BBB is worthless.
Many of us who are 30+ associate those sites with the "OMG PONIES!" crowd.
I'm one of those. Ehm, the old guys, not the pony crowd. I took the opportunity to try to find out what Facebook is like because someone recently asked me if I had a page there, but it seems that you can't do anything unless you have an account and are logged in. The help section of the site doesn't seem to feature screenshots. Is there a way to get a feeling of what the site's about without creating a fake account? My old age keeps me from just entering all my personal data and worry later. Maybe there are some pages set to "public for everyone", so some URLs would be nice.
If anybody my age had a myspace page, my first reaction would be that he's a total loser or way too interested in teenagers to be healthy.
Do you mean 60+?
I ask because I'm in the 30+ group and my parents and aunts and uncles are on Facebook.
Thus proving that pedophilia does in fact run in families.
Accountability is when the douche bags that runs the joint get send to pound-me-in-the-a__ prison for all their misdeeds. Otherwise all they will do is shutdown operation and start up another one under a different name (SCO comes to mind with their current scheme (see groklaw for details))
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Thank God I was universally hated, loathed, ridiculed, and mocked in High School for my interest in history (WWII, Pacific Theater) and computer science. Anyone from classmates.com trying to reach me is either:
A: Trying to kill me because I stole their girlfriend after college because I actually had a decent paying job.
B: Trying to kill me because I ended up as their boss and fired them for showing up to work drunk after I stole their girlfriend.
C: An ex-girlfriend planning to sue me for emotional damages after they found out I in fact did a piss-poor job writing thier final paper.
D: A former classmate who is going through a mid-life crisis and is desparately trying to reach a former classmate in hopes thier life turned out worse then their own.
E: A former classmate named Robert who now is named Donna and want's to meet
F: A former classmate that needs help hiding a body in a New Mexico desert.
G: A former girlfriend who was in band class who's boyfriend turned out to be a sexual predator and needs someone to talk to...
H: A former classmate I owe money too!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I was a stoner in high school and had a small group of close friends, but ever since I signed up a long time ago to find out about a class reunion I've been getting emails from Classmates.com telling me that people were signing my guestbook and were looking for me. I was never so popular until Classmates.com. If I was lacking any self-esteem at all I'd be thrilled, but I know better and I'm just annoyed. Just another example of marketing at all costs even if it makes your enterprise look ridiculous to all but the most desperate losers.
I was later forced to convert to Visa! (Just sayin'.)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
... I am the one who took the bait and signed up for the gold membership. Classmate.com emails were already going to my spam folder, but I look that over before I empty it, and their's claimed that I had "2 New Guestbook Entries!" or something like that. At that point I decided to see if anyone I knew had recently added themselves to the list, and sure enough, and old friend had not very long ago.
Suspecting that this person may have left me a guestbook entry, I bought the gold membership, instead of just tracking down his phone number. Upon logging in with my new gold status, I was rewarded by finding two guestbook entries from names I had never heard of and not from my school.
In my defense, I am usually smarter than this. However, the good news was that when I emailed support asking to have any and all of my information removed, they complied without complaint in a timely manner, and even refunded my payment. I was shocked.
The moral here is, if you get caught in a moment of weakness and stupidity like I did, send them an email demanding to have your info removed immediately, and maybe you will get a refund too.
Yep! Same experience here. I avoided those "social networking" sites for a long time, because I'm 37 - and didn't see a need to put my profile right next to all the teens and early 20-somethings. I wanted to post pictures of interesting events I attended, or of my kid, or what-have-you. No point putting that up in the same place everyone else has their 250 poorly focused snapshots they took from last night's big party.....
But Facebook really did let me re-connect with a lot of people I last saw as long ago as 3rd. or 4th. grade! Within a week of making a profile there, I had 5 or 6 friend requests, all legitimate and from people I really lost touch with. I was impressed.
I also had some luck with Friendster, since it seems to be a much less "hip" or "trendy" site these days. It seems like an older crowd uses it, just because they started out with it before competing sites really got off the ground, and stuck with it after that.
I just hate these "social" websites. They are focused on getting content on it, but people barely put any content on it. The worst implemented idea they got is the let-me-get-into-your-hotmail-account-so-that-I-can-spam-everybody-you-ever-knew. It already happened to me three times. And in the three times, the site was not used at all by the people that invited me.
If that is not enough, some sites are prone to create lots of spam. I always state that I am a boring person, that I hate people. Somehow, nice looking women want to me to have them as a contact. That cannot be true, I tell you.
Now, let me get into the basement.
IMHO next target should be spoke.com
Bow before me, for I am root.
Has anyone else gotten a birthday reminder on myspace, only to log in and find that no one is actually having a birthday?
Seems like a great way to drive up the hit count.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
D: A former classmate who is going through a mid-life crisis and is desparately trying to reach a former classmate in hopes your life turned out worse then their own.
So fvcking true... I can't count how many people contacted me out of the blue (name and phone number searches) only to find out they are doing worst than me, lol. These were the same popular boys and girls who would not give me the time of day if their life depended on it, then it kills me when they tell me I am so lucky with success. Fvck you! Dumbass! Should have gone to college or not knockup your girlfriend during/right after high school.
Nice story! You did the right thing! So, who do you use now?
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Yup, my towing insurance company just did that last month.
I was too lazy to send them the new card number, so they got it themselves I guess?
I don't care about that one since it saved me a bit of hassle.
Dude, I'm nearly 50. Just, no. Ick. Really didn't need to think that.
nice that it actually worked out for 1 out of the 3 of us talking about it right now :)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I have a confession to make. Hi, my name is Ron and I'm a user of Classmates.com.
I got an account when they first started in the mid nineties, when the service was entirely free. When they went to a 2 tiered scheme, I paid for the extended service for awhile but let it lapse when I was laid off during boom.dot.bust. Went back to the free tier at that time.
I wonder if classmates.com started out legit and then more recently drifted to the dark side. I did not have billing problems when I quit the paid service in 2001, but that was seven years ago; don't know what they're like now.
They *do* send a lot of cruft in the mail. No doubt about that. I wrote a rule to trash most of it. But as far as the service itself goes, I have to admit, I really have been contacted by former classmates and renewed a few relationships. Not many, probably 12 - 15 in 13 years, most of them after the turn of the century. But if someone held a gun to my head, I'd have to admit that the service has worked as advertised. Forced to rate the experience, I'd give it an ambivalent-to-mildly-positive.
That said, if they really are doing all the stuff in the article, they deserve to have the crap sued out of them.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Click here!
So am I the only one out there that hated every one of them son of a bitch's he graduated with? If mom hadn't of held a gun to my head I wouldn't even went to my graduation ceremony. I would have just picked my diploma up at the office the next day. I'm talking high school not college. Once I was out of there I really didn't care of any of them fuckers lived or died at that point.
I got a reunion notice from them a few years back. I though of wiping my ass with it and mailing it back but though that would be in bad form. I sent them notice that there would be a $50 appearance and speaking fee. Never heard anything back. Didn't get my 50 bucks so I didn't go.
It even surprises me some what how much I hated them fuckers.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Yes, I fell for eHarmony. They are much worse. You know, us technical guys get so wrapped up in our work, we don't have time to meet any decent women.
Well, eHarmony will bug the heck out of you and "convince" you to sign up for a 7 day trail. During that 7 days you will get all kinds of "Matches" with interesting, and attractive women. Some will start communication with you.
You're thinking to yourself - this is great! I'm meeting more women then I've ever met in bars or anywhere else! Multiple matches keep showing up and your communicating with more of them. And you are thinking: "Wow - I'm going to be dating 3 or 4 woman!".
Then the 7 days passes. All the sudden, the matches slow down. A lot of the ones you were talking to suddenly stop communication with you. ( were they even real women in the first place? Or just employees of eHarmony.com masquerading as potential dates? ) Down to 3 or 4 matches a week. None very interesting. Not nearly as attractive as the matches in the first 7 days.
You email eHarmony and you call them ( finding the phone number takes a little work - they didn't have it on their website when I was trying to contact them ). A refund is not available after 7 days. You are out 165 dollars, if you paid for the 6 months.
They say you need to tweak your match "settings" to get more matches. Well, heck, I have every race and religion checked, plus I have from 23 to 38 in the age range, and I have 100 miles from my zip code checked. I live in a city with over 5 million people in the metro area as well.
After a few weeks, the matches are 1 or 2 a week. One a few ever respond. Most don't even communicate. After 3 months, the "trickle" of women is a steady 1 to 2 a week.
If you call eHarmony at this point, they either give you the "you have to be patient, it takes time to find the perfect match" line of BS. If you keep asking for a refund, they start getting annoyed with you.
Emails aren't responded to. I even wrote a snail mail certified letter to the CEO of eHarmony asking for a refund. Nothing. Not even a phone call or a letter. No response. It's like your emails and snail mails go to /dev/null.
Classmates.com? Just a minor annoyance. Someone needs to sue the heck out of eHarmony.com. They are the real scammers. I wish they would get sued big time. I would do it myself, but I didn't keep good records and this happened over a year ago.
Somebody please sue eHarmony??? Please!!!
is even worse, fall for their spam and their system will scrape your email address book and spam everybody in your name.
I found out my old girlfriend's married name through Classmates.com! Now I can start stalking her....
Ibid.
Selling advertising, and collecting aggregate data. We all know this. All pretense of "keeping in touch" is nothing more than the carrot to collect your information.
Yeah, and reporting news and making TV shows are just about selling advertising and doing market demographics.
When did advertising become evil?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Within a week of making a profile there, I had 5 or 6 friend requests, all legitimate and from people I really lost touch with. I was impressed.
Exactly. I'm almost 30, and I felt the same way for the longest time. I just missed facebook in college, and had see the ghetto-geocities look of myspace.
But I went to my high school reunion a year ago and a guy I knew was like 'Get on myspace. I know it's lame, but just get on it so I can find you again.' I did, and it was lame for a while. I think I still have less than eight friends there, and two of them are family.
And then when I was trying to track someone down I got on facebook...and it turned out literally half the people I know were on there.
What's more, it started snowballing, with people friending people I hadn't seen since HS that I'd been looking for, but had no idea they were in touch with...or maybe they weren't, and just happened to search for them at the right time, who knows.
I fact, I've actually made a prediction about the future WRT this: The current generation of children will reverse decades of the trend in this 'mobile society', and actually keep in touch with friends their entire life. Which is an incredibly huge societal shift that almost no one has noticed.
Granted, this was supposed to happen with email, heck, it was probably supposed to happen with telephones or even postal service, but 'social networking' has changed the rules because it lets people actually find each other and get themselves put in each other 'address books', where writing a message literally takes five seconds, and people can actually stay current on their friend's life.
Even if facebook goes away, it doesn't matter. As people become used to such sites, they might move to a different one, but the point is they will sign up, and reconnect with everyone again, their entire life.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Contact your old high school, make sure they have your address and telephone number.
In fact, you can probably find out contact information for the class president and just send them an email.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
...get a year's worth of Gold membership.
As long as they supply their credit card information for the account. No, not for billing purposes. They just need it to... um... identify you. Yep.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
Maybe because those didn't exist for our last reunion but classmates did...
Of course i just got the same annoying crap we are talking about from reunion.com that is every bit as bad as classmates ! Exact same things saying someone is looking for me (altho the name was right) I don't see any interesting info (less than classmates as i recall) except every other page wanting me to pay them.
Only difference i see is a tagline on reunion.com saying 700 million profiles...huh, i must be the last HS graduate in the world to sign up i guess....?
Don't see the advantage in expecting everyone to make a new profile there before next reunion when the majority are already on classmates :(
Could have sworn i bought a lifetime membership at classmates when they started but can't prove it ATM. Of course the same applies for gamespy...no more lifetime anything for me.
> Attempts to remove yourself from the mailing list may only result in more mailings from the site of ill repute
Will wonders never cease? I suppose next you're going to tell me that the luck hasn't really traveled around the world seven times?
The headline makes it sound like classmates.com is a real, more-or-less legitimate website that happens to have some shady practices. I was under the impression it was nothing more than a source of spam, just like bluemountain.com and that African outfit with the all-uppercase keyboards.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I'm 33 years old. I've had an email address since I can remember.
Even my Mother and all her living friends have email addresses.
-ted
I remember getting email from them claiming someone was trying to contact me. Then they wanted me to sign up to find out who. I did and there was no one. I don 't know why I was surprised. I don't remember having to pay, just being disappointed that there wasn't actually someone trying to communicate with me. It is true, I am a lonely guy nerd, but it is still false advertising.
I actually paid for classmates for the past 4 years. I'm annoyed that I pay and they still bombard me with advertisements when I visit and am logged in. But, I have been able to get in contact with former school mates and military friends than I could find through any other means. It worked for a while but not everyone uses classmates and it seems to be growing stale. They require payment if I would send a message to the recipient. But I don't feel ripped off nor do I care. I get out of their service what I wanted though their price is hefty for what it has to offer (including adverts when you're already paying).
Thanks,
Leabre
Does Facebook keep info on what schools you were in, like Classmates does? My problem is that, even if I really wanted to reconnect with people I knew in school 20 years ago, I have absolutely no idea what their most of their last names were. Classmates at least organized everyone by school and dates attended, so it was easy to find people you knew. Of course, I always refused to pay for "Gold" membership, so I've never gotten much out of the site.
They send out all these pointless e-mails practically every time someone you know logs on.
And I initially signed up for a year, what I didn't realize is they would automatically charge me again after that year was up. That took some trouble. If you have a credit card in their system and don't want to get auto-renewed, go there and remove the # now.
I really found there wasn't that much activity on Classmates.com anyway, Facebook is where my former classmates are.
Classmates.com "knew at all times that the individuals, members, and/or users who were making attempts to contact Plaintiff and the Class were not former classmates when they... made false representations regarding the attempted contacts," reads the complaint. "The Defendants... intended to deceive, and did deceive Plaintiff and the Class by concealing and failing to disclose the fact that the individuals, members, and/or users who were making attempts to contact Plaintiff and the Class were not former classmates."
As a result, Michaels hopes that a judge will approve his case as a class-action and award general, special, and punitive damages to him and the rest of the class. He also asks for injunctive relief against Classmates.com, as well as restitution, attorney's fees, and pre- and post-judgment interest.
At first glance, it certainly seems as if Michaels has a case against the company, but this isn't just any false advertising claim. A number of websites--especially dating sites--use similar tactics to nudge people into paying, so a win for Michaels could change how these sites advertise their services. Even a simple change, like adding the name of the person trying to contact you, would make things better, as it would at least show that the person is real and allow the potential customer to make a judgment call on whether to subscribe (and offer proof that the person is real, too).
No, just "adding the name of the person trying to contact you" would not "show [me, or any other recipient] that the person is real" because so far, the persons trying to contact the marks have not been real, nor known to us. To show classmates.com's victims that the persons are real, those persons must be both real and known to the recipients of their SPAM messages. So unsurprisingly, classmates.com's unethical business practices are the direct result of an untenable business model, in which they serve the non-existent [at best, inconsequential compared to the number of recipients of their fraudulent messages] market for persons desperate to contact former classmates, but unable to do so via alumni offices, informal networks of common acquaintances, or search engines.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p