I've recently been recieving emails entitled "Someone Likes You", and discarding them as obvious spam. But after a few, I was intrigued as to whether this is spam or an incredibly misguided matchmaking venture, so tonight I set out to find out.

Anyway, upon following a link, one finds out that this site (of which I omit the name to avoid the possibility of inadvertantly advertising) is a matchmaking venture. The premise is not new, and not altogether without merit. Instead of telling somebody you have a crush on them, you tell a trusted third party, who informs you both if you nominate each other. Perhaps this is recognisable from normal life, if not from the schoolyard.

Of course this falls down on the Internet, because there is no inherent cost in nominating somebody. So you give the names of everybody who might concievably have a crush on you, so that you are notified if they have a crush on you. But since they did the same, nothing is accomplished, for a match doesn't mean that either one of you likes the other, just that you know (of) each other.

All the same, this can be a very sensible idea. For example, see Steve Kemp's Livejournal Valentine System. This imposes certain constraints, such as that you can only nominate a small number of people. The system works by having you join first (because you have heard via word of mouth, as the idea spreads across livejournal), and then nominate crushes. Notification happens at a fixed time (that is, Valentine's day).

Needless to say, that is not how this system works. Upon recieving an email saying that somebody has a crush on you (which might be because somebody listed you, or perhaps because your email address was somewhere to be found on the Internet), you go to the website and register to find out who nominated. When you register, you give five email addresses of people you have a crush on. If none of those matches, you get a clue (such as thier age, or hair colour), and you are required to give five more email addresses. Repeatedly.

Now each of these addresses you mention get an email saying you have a crush on them. Some of the recipients thus register, and name further email addresses...

It should be clear that this system does not work, at least for the user. Emails fly all over the place, a huge number of people are informed of crushes, and in reality people list addresses of friends they don't even have a crush on, so any reported matches have a high chance of being bogus. Junk emails, detrimental effect on the infrastructure of the Internet, people spend time downloading and reading yet more junk email, yadayadayada.

Now what if they have ulterior motives? Never mind what if, for surely this was not set up for the amusement value. This seems an incredibly effective way of gathering email addresses. Trawl the web, usenet, and you get a fair whack of addresses, but get people to give you their friends addresses, and you have a whack of verified addresses which may not be in the wild yet. For each person who bites, you might get 5-10 addreses. The odds look good.

Then all you need do is sell those addresses onto one of the many companies which deals in such things. Simple!

Of course this may not be the case in this case. This differs from standard spam in that the emails give a link to a valid, properly designed website. And it's quite likely that the site does match people together, as this is easy enough to do on the way to gathering all this data. But I find it hard to believe that this information goldmine isn't exploited for monetary gain.

So in conclusion, if you get such an email, or something similar, think. Do you really want all your friends to get an email saying somebody fancies them, just in case you find out who says they have a crush on you? Do you really want to get your friends on spammers' address lists, just to find out that somebody wondered if you liked them?

P.S. With regards to my experimental methodology, I did not sign you all up with this website. A bundle of junk email addresses were used to pry into the system in the hope of enlightenment.

P.P.S. If you actually listed my name for this service, instead of my address having been harvested, then feel free to own up, I hold no grudges. Generally, I would rather people just admitted such things. Feel free to send me an email, or leave a private comment (comments are actually anonymous in any case).