This is a pretty sly scam...

[OuTpaTienT]

http://www.sendacrush.com/

These guys have got nifty little scam going. What they do is allow you to send an anonymous email to someone informing them that some mystery person has a crush on them. (Obviously it's geared toward 14 year old girls, but I'm sure all kinds of people fall for it.)

Ok, so when a person receives one of these anonymous emails they are invited to go to the Sendacrush.com website and guess who might have sent them a crush. If you guess correct they'll let you know, but if guess wrong, well then just keep guessing.

So where's the scam? Here: The way you guess who may have sent you a crush is by entering the email of who you think it might be. See what's going on here?

They are collecting tons of valid email addresses to do with as they please. And on top of this, they are sending these anonymous "someone has a crush on you" emails without being prompted by a user. So one could end up giving Sendacrush.com all their friends/family's email address before ever knowing they've been had.

And this is not just a cynical theory on my part, I actually gave them the benefit of the doubt and tested my theory before speaking up. I did this by going to their site and guessed the sender of a crush email. I guessed using an email address of mine that nobody but nobody knows about. This secret email address has only received one piece of mail in the past 10 months and that was sent by myself. But sure enough, about a week after I guessed that email address at Sendacrush.com I got some spam from them. It says somebody has a crush on me…well ain’t that sweet…too bad absolutely NOBODY knows that email address…except them now.

Is that illegal? What can I do to expose them?

[vass0922]

*sigh* people are so gullible
it is pretty sly though, imagine they could make some real money out of it too... well that is in internet money nowadays which doesn't mean all that much

Not sure what could be done about it, maybe the BBB ... there are some orgs that deal with spammer co's like this but not sure of the names.

low really low! - wiz

[TheBurningCat]

Uh-huh! My mates um went ape for days trying to work out who had a crush on her, he wouldn't belive it was a scam until i sent "crush card" to one of my emails that she excepted she had been had!

but if you think about it someone out there reconed that you had a crush on them !

[krusty the klown]

Is that illegal? What can I do to expose them?

Presumably, it is illegal if they are collecting information then spamming without your consent to do so

Here is their privacy statement FYI:

http://www.sendacrush.com/privacy_policy.html

& here is their terms of service st8ment:

http://www.sendacrush.com/tos.html

And just how do you know Out, that I don't have a crush on you?
Actually there is another one too.. a while back I got one but someone had sent me an mp3 you were supposed to go to their site to hear it. Then guess who sent it to you...
Right..

[Thud]

There's another one that claims that "someone has sent you a kiss" that works the same way. I got one a while back, decided it smelled too fishy, and deleted it before I went any further.

[radio1_mike]

Hey I got one of those email "crushes" a few weeks back.

I never replied. Just deleted it, it seemed shady.

1. My wife never mentioned it.
2. If ain't my wife sending me "crushes", to keep myself out of trouble I should not know who the "sender" was. :-)
3. Can't figure out for the life of me, who send me a crush, I figured it had to me one of those automailer things.

interesting as i have recieved a few of these. but having to guess sort of bothered me so i block the whole domain of sendacruch.com so they leave me alone now

my gf had one coming to her and atuaclly someone did send it to her and she guessed who it was.

thanks for the info

[TonTo]

I've gotten a couple of those......... They piss me off..... I let it be known to all my friends, that if they give my email address out, I'll give thier name, address, and phone number out..... not many people give my email address out. There's some down side to that... but, oh well,