Jump to content

word-of-mouth.info What??????


goaliejerry
 Share

Recommended Posts

https://www.word-of-mouth.info/[email protected]

Seriously, I recieved this thing in my email and have no idea what the h*ll it is. I read all the info and from what I see it looks like some major scam, but I just don't understand what the fricken premise is. What the h*ll is this? Why would anyone ever see a need for this site? And lastly, just how big of a fricken scam is this thing????

Is this for real or what? I can't believe it is.

[ 05-21-2003, 08:51 PM: Message edited by: GoalieJerry ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Or possibly, if someone has a membership at this site, could you find out whats been said about me and let me know? I highly suspect that this is a ruse to get me to join the service, I just can't imagine that this site would have enough users to make it practical.

Please PM me if you can help me out in this regard, thank you.

[ 05-21-2003, 08:48 PM: Message edited by: GoalieJerry ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-...outh.info"+scam" target="_blank">google search came up with two very good leads:

One

Two

Here's a snip of the first one. It's fairly conclusive:

quote:

Posted by: monkish

Got a new and interesting piece of email the other day saying that someone had "filed a report on me", at this website.

word-of-mouth.info claims to be a service that allows people to trade information about others anonymously. I got a free membership so I could see what had been "reported" about me, but they tell you you have to contact the other person using their anonymous email system and ask them. I couldn't figure out whether someone had requested info about me or whether they had information about me. When I saw that you had to pay a fee to use their anonymous email system to contact the alleged other person, and that they only seemed to have my email address, I realized it was probably bogus. They also go on to offer disclaimers that they are basically operating outside the law and can't be touched. This seems bogus to me but I issue a warning because of connections to possible activities discussed here.

If anyone knows about this website, or has experienced this type of email claiming someone has information on you and claims to not be spam, please feel free to comment. I'm thinking it's probably a bogus way of trying to extort money from people and I'm hoping to hear from someone to confirm my suspicions and to relieve my mind.

I consider myself to be a law-abiding citizen and resent attempts to dig into my private life like this. I would like to remain gainfully employed. I think it borders on stalking, but hopefullly is just my own paranoia.

----------

Posted by: Minh

There is no obvious check-and-balance function for this service. Yhere is no method of of refuting the information that anyone choses to post about you.

This could be dangerous.

----------

Posted by: bicuspid

Before you worry too much, check out this link:

It basically says it's all a scam

And here's number two, in entirety:

quote:

So I get a spam this morning from some web site called word-of-mouth.info. After poking around the site a bit, here's what I was able to find. It's pretty funny.. pathetic, actually... (click more)

Okay, well, it started with this e-mail I recieved in my Yahoo! mailbox. Okay, I thought, who did I piss off this week? So, throwing caution to the wind, I followed the URL and recieved an error message that the report could not be found.

Fine, I thought

So, I started poking around the site. Okay, they want me to sign up before I can access anything. Sure, why not: they obviously already have my E-Mail address, so why not?

The first thing I start noticing at this point is that everything on the website IS TYPED IN ALL CAPS (well, more or less). Uh oh. [riffling through paper] Isn't the Apple ][ look supposed to be a warning?

So, after registering, I get an E-Mail with my new user password. Oddly enough, my new user password is "NEWUSER". How original. BTW: what's with the "information is worth USD0.01" disclaimer? Is this really necessary? Could I now send these people a bill for US$0.01 and collect it?

Any rate, after wandering a bit around the site and typing a few connotations of my name, I realise that perhaps I've been fooled. There is no information about me on this site. In fact, I begin to wonder if there is any information on anybody on this site.

So, I diddled around with the system and discovered that their CGI scripts (well, okay, ActiveScripts) were.. well, a little funky. For one, you can get around the requirement to have an account by just simply rejecting cookies. If you have cookie control, reject the cookie when you follow this link and you'll get one of their wonderful reports. Praise Jesus.

Perhaps the best part of all is you can list all the reports on the system simply by passing the search system no CGI parameters. 20 reports? Wow, I'm excited.

And check out the reports. Some of them are actually.. well, funny in a pathetic kindof way.

BTW: I'm pretty sure, after playing around, that regardless of what ID you put into the ID field of the "WARNING" report, you get the same error. I wouldn't be suprised if the WARNING report even queries the database.

Two things scare me about this site. One: that they actually went through the trouble of buying (apparently) some kind of spam list to promote the site when apparently there isn't much there to promote, and Two: they actually expect people to pony up a couple of bucks for this crap.

Oh, the About Us page is a real hoot. Seven million reports? Since 1998? The .info TLD has only been around for.. what, like a little less than a year?

Oh, brother.

There is no evidence supporting the alleged site as a "real" informational site. Considering it's claim that it's been open since 1998 (lol, read that second to last paragraph of two) it can't be possible that NO ONE is going against the claims that it's a scam site, unless it is a scam site. Five years. No positive claims for the site.

In fact, I don't even believe anyone's joined the site technically. Everyone's believed a scam from the start, more or less. So, no, I don't think you'll find anyone with a membership. Unless they got one of those spamvertisements with a "free membership" attatched.

I think that about sums up a quick five-minute session of researching and cross-referencing this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

quote:

Originally posted by Tac:

why the heck are you even paying attention to spam mail?

You deserve a Trojan for that!

HMMM...are you talking about a trojan as in software or a Trojan as in latex?

Seriously, that site hurt my eyes as soon as I opened it. Anything that glaring, painful, confused is designed to overwhelm the senses so you just click the proverbial submit button to get away from the thing. YIKES!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I didn't initially suspect spam because I have heard of something similar to this, where women could (this was one of those "women" type sites) post information on guys they knew. That one was about spreading information about nice guys who don't get enough attention, in an effort to increase their chances by telling women how nice they were. (whatever) But no, clearly and quickly it became apparent that this is BS. It makes me sad though because I am sure someone has actually paid $20 out of ignorance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"It makes me sad though because I am sure someone has actually paid $20 out of ignorance."

Nonsense! They bought themselves a $20 lesson that cured their ignorance.

It takes a $2000 lesson to cure them of stupidity though

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...