I recently had an e-mail come in, supposedly from an old friend with whom I've had occasional contact, "asking me" to connect on reunion.com ... much like the letters I get from a half a dozen other "social networking" sites at the office.
When I went there to sign up, I was rather taken aback by the heavy-handed push for "premium" services ... they supposedly have a "free" level, but it appears that this only gets you listed in their database, and you have no access to other information (there are two "pay" levels). I contacted my friend and asked if he had "really" meant to lure me into this, and he responded that when signing up he'd checked some box that must have allowed reunion.com to mine his address book, and everybody he's ever had any e-mail contact with got the same "please join" spam.
Now, if this stopped there, it would be just unpleasant, but the scumbags at reunion.com don't leave well enough alone ... every week they send out an e-mail saying how many people (and their age range) had supposedly "searched for your name". However, when you click through on these e-mails to see who might be looking, you are met with the "upgrade" screen telling you that you can't get that information unless you're paying a monthly fee! Frankly, from the "teasers" they put in (they tell you the sex, the age, and the city), I doubt that any of the list is really looking for ME (there were no "oh, isn't that where so-and-so lives?" flashes) so I strongly suspect that this is simply a scam within a scam.
Needless to say, I went over there today and deleted my account ... I'd just thought I'd warn all and sundry to ignore any mail coming out from reunion.com (by the way, it wouldn't be coming "from me" because I never give these sorts access to my data)!
This has been a Public Service Announcement ...