Mate1.com-negative

[lonely_you]

In joining Mate1 in the beginning, I made the mistake of making my User ID the same as my then Yahoo ID. This was a big mistake I learned. I started getting Ims from guys that I had no idea who they were or anything. I contacted Mate1 to see if I could get my Mate1 ID changed and explained the problem of receiving Ims on Yahoo from other members. Their reply was to me, they prefer I didn't change my User name since it would only confuse the other customers who were in contact with me. So I went along with it for a while. After a few months my profile had almost 4000 hits..I mean, come on here....and I was still getting Ims on Yahoo from unknown people. They would admit to seeing my profile on Mate1 and wanted to contact me. So I deleted the yahoo account and I deleted the Mate1 account. I created a new Mate1 account with no connection to my new yahoo. Soon I noticed the hits on my profile had almost stopped.
After finding Romancescam I recognize a lot of the profile pictures I saw on Mate1 in the Album. I found that some profiles on Mate1 had the same picture but different personal information. I found that with Mate1 all you need is a different email address with each profile. They don't even verify the email address. They will also send out generic responses to other customers under your ID, making them think, you are interested.
Do they check Ips? I very seriously doubt it. Does anyone check the profile? I don't think so, not with the same picture being on at least 5 profiles with different information all with similar user names..
Oh yes, they do have a warning about not sending money to anyone online and not to give out personal information. Their email is set up that email address can not be sent but you can send them on Mate1 IMs.

[brrilo]

I made the mistake of joining this site last month beyond the free trial, and apparently I failed to cancel in time of the recurring charge after the first month -- fine, my fault...I'm a slacker and forgetful. I thought it was a month from sign up date, not the end of the month proper (unless that's just a coincidence, I haven't checked my statement.) I do realize that this place is the bottom of the barrel of the bottom of an even bigger barrel filled with poo, hence all the flies (I could go on and on but it's fairly obvious). I was just going to take the bullet, see if any decency surfaces, and now it's canceled for next month.

One thing about this place is when I actually do get a well thought out email that seems legit, the next day when I go to reply the member deletes their profile. Maybe M1 has a policy of remove LEGIT people to give the scammers more room.That or the legit person is buried by spamloads of raunch and bail out asap.

But anyhow, when the membership renewed, my credit card company called to make sure this was me -- "yes" I tell them. But I about turned white in my tracks with my visiting relatives in the other room when the guy was confirming that it was me who signed up for what he had listed as "an ESCORT SERVICE"?!?!?

Dear lord.

[lonely_you]

Wow! Escort Service, that could explain some of the off-colored messages I received while there. Its free for women, so we don't know how its listed.

[brrilo]

Updated March 2009:


haha..there's actually a random banner ad for Mate1 here.. oh well, I know it's random.
..

Out of morbid curiosity, I wondered if they ever fixed their little "broken" report abuse feature that I reported on during my last term as a member. I peeked in via a free account, flipped through a couple pages using a "new member" search, and thought this typical screen was too amusing to not share here:



^
It's like playing a kids game!

So, someone should report these people! ::elevator music:: ahh-ha! "report...abuse....>click!<" and lo and behold:



It must be a "bug" that slipped by with the site's new makeover from several months ago. (the "bug" is still there as of march 09)


I should also mention that the new setup has preset searches divided by "most attractive" "elite women/men" "professionals" "tall" and "beauties".. I imagine if these are the typical results in the "all" category, I don't want to know what kinda stuff these new filters dredge up.

I don't think this site just tolerates scammers, I think they are virtually breeding them.

*end of update*
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Original Post:

Welp, I noticed since they changed the site, I've only had one garbage hit, and no mail aside the couple people I've talked to on there wondering where I went. I noticed that they don't show more than 10 pages of users on or offline at a time now, so I'm sure that has something to do with it.

But, on the "whose on now list" I noticed there were two people with the exact same photo listed on the same row of photos, different ages and different states. Bwhahaha, it's still ruBbIsH!


*edit*

Thought I'd mention their "report a problem" feature has been broken as of 10/21/08 when I tried to report the last duplicate profile I saw.

[Snarfbladder]

I don't think this site just tolerates scammers, I think they are virtually breeding them.

I'd second that. It would be easy to form the opinion that they're paying them, honestly, just to appear to have female content.

OTOH, to be fair, there is at least one real women there, and as long as you are not accepting chat requests it at least appears to be relatively easy to tell the difference.

The most aggressive scammers, generally,:
[*]don't have pictures on their profiles
[*]don't fill out any of the likes and dislikes beyond "smoking" and "drinking"
[*]are stupidly careless with agreement between profession, education, and salary levels [nurses with high school education, endless accountants because it's the first category.]
[*]have generic "looking for saccharine true love" descriptions

So at the moment, as far as I can tell, one could probably contact real women if one took the time to be discriminating in reading the profiles.

However, if you dare to open a chat window, as many as 75 scammers (on, say, Friday night) will glom on and request chats - and if there are 75 scammers fitting the above description wanting to chat with one guy with a chat window open, there seems like very little assurance that there aren't smarter scammers who are capable of building a more complete and compelling profile and acting more like real persons.

They charge for guys, but not for girls, so the experience for girls could be totally different.

One seemingly deliberate flaw is that in chat, there is no way to flag inappropriate behavior or obvious signs of scamming (like being "American, but stranded in Ghana with dead parents, just like everyone else), so it seems as if Mate1 wishes to be deliberately ignorant of invitations off-site, cam girl invites, and blatant Ghana and Nigerian scammers that would be very easy to flag if one had a button to do so in the chat window.

[sanscam]

Same setup ...these girls live and born in usa but it looks like they did not go to school cause.. they know english??. Then They get u off mates to msn or yahoo and the fun starts.. what a scam .. this is a condensed log of tatannia and I .. She was born and lived in Elgin Illinois until 6 month ago where she went to nigeria to study to be a vet. my apologies to the Elgin County school board for what they are teaching for english

tatianna_tata2000: Am not looking for such man , am looking for man who ls ready to stay with me in time of problem and ready to help me
andymano1: 0000 baby I wish I was that man
tatianna_tata2000: but l need to trust you
andymano1: Ok What can I do to earn your trust
andymano1: Ok I will try
andymano1: you are too beatiful just to forget and leave
tatianna_tata2000: Thaks
tatianna_tata2000: Andy l need to trust you to get along with you
tatianna_tata2000: manny dating site Do you used
andymano1: This is first time
tatianna_tata2000: okay babe
tatianna_tata2000: l need to trust you
tatianna_tata2000: l need the profile out
andymano1: what do u mean profile out? You need to Logg out??
tatianna_tata2000: l mean lf you wanna get along with me
andymano1: Ok what do I need to do
tatianna_tata2000: you need to delet the profile
andymano1: Ok I will do it now.. You mean on Mate1
andymano1: I deleted my profile
tatianna_tata2000: how can l know you have delet it
tatianna_tata2000: l need the username and password
tatianna_tata2000: l wanna know
andymano1: But if I give u what will you give me
tatianna_tata2000: like what
tatianna_tata2000: l need to trust you
tatianna_tata2000: l just wanna see how rea you are
tatianna_tata2000: and maybe you can be trusted
andymano1: Ok Here is my profile log in
andymano1: Username - Im_noSucker@thisScam.con
andymano1: Password KeeptrynBitch
tatianna_tata2000: babe l want you to know that relationship ls all about ful commitment
andymano1: I am not stupid.. But u most certainly are.. But Im sure u can find one stupid man to belive you bullshit story.

[bobfrombc]

omg thats funny

I am going to post my own soon

I especially like how many women have relocated to Guana because one of their parents died and they are now living with the other. Apparently all widowed Americans move to Guana and take their hot daughters who need money to live and want to marry strangers in North America.

This one girl, Mercy Botchway, asked me for money to buy food. I told her she tried to close me too fast but I understood -"its the way of the world," I said.

So to prove her love to me she then give a free show of her in her birthday suit using a lolly pop on my yahoo cam ---- not one of those sites they try to get you to sign up to. She actually looked like her picture

Then about a week later she asked again. So, I "sent" her money via western union and gave her an mctn number. She said she was having difficulty tracking it- so I pretended to get pissed off and as a result she gave me another show. The best part is that, in the mean time, I had canceled the western union.

Hey I figured if she was gonna scam me then its fair game.

If she had been honest and said "I will give you a private show on Yahoo and you pay me directly so we can cut out the middle man - I might have went for it.

So in short: yes Mate1 is filled with girls trying to hustle you one way or the other - but if you know that going in, it can be fun - mind you I have only been on 10 days so I'm not sure how much longer it will be entertaining. I have already changed my cc number and canceled my subscription so I have 20 days left to goof around if I feel so inclined.

[Cal]

I signed up for a free membership to a dating site called Mate1. You know, free means you can't communicate with anyone? All you can do is post a profile and browse other profiles. That's it.

But, after being there for a month, I find it odd that the only people that contact me are in Ghana or Nigeria. Most from Ghana.

They even have some ability to initiate a chat session through the site and I can chat with them, even though I am not supposed to be able to, and cannot initiate any chat sessions myself.

I did put my email (a special one for that site) in my profile so I can be contacted offline. So, the Ghanaians and the Nigerians are the only ones finding that information and strike up IM conversations asking to be added to my contact list.

What's funny, is when I get contacted by any of them, none of them have actually read my profile, where it has most the basic information they ask for when engaging with me. They want my pic, age, where I live, what I am looking for, etc. All the information provided by my profile.

Then, most of their profiles are identified as some where else in the world, about half of them in the USA. But, when you hear their story (all pretty much alike), they were from the location their profile states, but, they had to go to Africa to be with a sick mother or grandmother. I get such stories as they ended up there to be with a relative, or went their to volunteer nursing. But, they want a husband. So, they are immediately in love with you and need money to come see you. And, they use pictures very beautiful young ladies, mostly Caucasian, to entice you. I've never seen so many beautiful white girls stuck in Ghana before, looking for a husband across the globe.

So, I just mess with them and waste their time. I figure if they want to waste my time and steal from me, I will waste their time, too. Sometimes I will play along. But, lately, I have been challenging them with questions that they cannot but should be able to answer. When they figure out they've been busted, they disappear.

The volume of these people are way too many to document. I get about 10 per day attempting to run their scam on me. Most recognize very early on I am not a target. But, there is this one person who has more dedication than anyone I've seen. I've been mean to her, called her a liar, caught her in mixing up her lies, and she still continues to work me over. She has asked for money 3 times, each time I tell her it's not going to happen. But, she still keeps coming after me.

Darn, and the pics this person is using are hot as hell, too. Especially the naked ones. I figure as long as I can still get some sexy pics out of this person, I'll string them along further.

Anyway, I just wanted to alert you all about the high scam activity on Mate1 by the Ghanaians and Nigerians.

[scallywag]

Hi Cal,
Yes I also get a ton of Ghanians and Nigerians doing the exact same to me, but as I am a female, I get the 'notes' and instant chat all the time from guys who say they are from America/UK/Europe on a site I use especially to catch a few of them out ..then I find out they are from Ghana/Nigeria blah balh - I check their profiles and find out a picture is posted of some lovely looking white hunky chunky and no blog or profile added (apart from age and Country supposed to be from)!! I even had one come through on IM yesterday..with a female picture/profile, so I decided to do a lil 'bait' and lo and behold found out 'she' was a 'he' from Ghana!!!! I promptly disappeared off scene!!
Also...you may not be aware, but your gorgeous looking potential hot sexy 'girl/s' could also be a 'bloke' in disguise...Nigerians are a magnet for 'hooking' men into their 'web' also..and will pretend to be whoever they want to be...Just thought I would let you know!!
Have fun baiting..as some baiters here say...treat them as your 'toys'...and you are 'allowed' to break them
Good Luck Scallywag