How is adult bureau making the $$$ here?

Factual Questions
1

I recently received an interesting email from a woman soon after signing up for a personals site (email shown below along with my reply for those interested…). She listed a personal webpage which really got my hopes up until I noticed that she was using adultbureau.com to verify age for free (of course it required a credit card for verification purposes) further checking of the adultbureau site revealed that she would be paid $15 for each “customer” verified through her site.

My question is: If this age verification service is actually free, what do they do with your credit information in order to justify the $15 commision paid to the referrer?

(text below included for those bored enough to continue reading…)

Hi! How are you? Can you believe that we are this far into 2003 already? Before you know it, it will be over. Days are just flying by! Sorry it took me so long to reply to you. My computer crashed and my friend just finished fixing it for me. ")… So…, thanks for writing back! Anyways, When I read your profile you seemed like a sweet guy, and since that is what I’m looking for I wrote you =).

I have to say, I feel kind of weird looking through personal ads to meet a man, but the ones I’ve met at bars or clubs usually are putting on an act, or are too busy trying to be cool in front of their friends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an outgoing and social person but that scene gets old really fast. Anyway, my girlfriend told me she met a guy that she hit it off with on a personals website so I’m giving it a shot :))

Well, about me, I’m an active person and like to experience new things and meet new people. I’m not that complicated to please, unlike some women, so an expensive date is not what I require. When a man puts some thought into it shows me he cares more than just throwing some money around. I also think that being intimate is an important part of a relationship but I’m not some “slut” to sleep around. I want to get to know someone before I become intimate. I’m not saying months or even weeks, just long enough that I know you’re not some guy that loves playing with different women’s heads!

So… If you’re looking for the same then we should get to know each other better and maybe get together sometime. Let’s shoot for next weekend. That will give us some time to get to know each other better. I have attached a pic to the email so let me know if you get it. I also put up some pictures on my website. http://www.host4mbfree.com/danaspage, let me know what you think. I’m online usually in the evenings so hit me up on there and we can chat.
xoxo… Dana!

(and my reply, carefully worded on the offhand chance that she really WAS for real…)

Hi Dana.

I don’t want to seem rude, but I have to admit that your whole story sounds a bit suspect once I realized that you are making $15 off each person who registers for the “free” age check thing. Kinda makes a guy wonder what they do with the credit info they get in order to make that money back.

I’m sorry, but I just dont think that your stated intentions are for real. Good luck on your new business venture though, I would like to compliment you on your site (very slick) and I have no doubt that you will make some $$$ off it. Hell, you really had me going for a minute there.

Best wishes,
Mike.

2

My guess is that your card will be charged when you put in the info, no matter what the page says. Or that the data goes to “her” in the process of validation, and somebody just starts charging against it.

OR, a little more subtly, your response to her will trigger another from her, some further invitation to hook up online, and you will eventually be led to a page that will collect credit card data.

I would suggest that responding to the email at all was likely a poor choice, though I don’t want to venture to much in this direction because it’s not the right forum. FYI, many scams are built on the expectation of getting “hits” on mass mailings/emailings. Any response that doesn’t bring the cops to their door is basically a plus for them. How?

  1. The fact that you respond makes your name and address more valuable in the mass market “list” industry. They can sell your name at a higher rate to other marketers.
  2. Once you indicate interest, there is some chance they can lead you into an exchange where they collect more useful information about you: real name, street address, SSN, credit card numbers, etc. Again, even if you don’t ultimately bite on this scam, they will have a more complete and more valuable product (information about you) to sell around to other mass marketers.

You seem to have some doubts about whether it really is a scam. If the posted text is the entire email, then have no doubt, it’s absolutely a scam.

How am I so certain? It’s really quite calculated

  1. She never says anything that indicates she’s personally read your ad.
  2. At one point she says she’s replying to you. Did you send her anything first?
  3. Another place she says she’s the one making the initial contact. But it’s all kind of fuzzy, so you can imagine she’s just confusing two people she’s corresponding with and not worry too much about the fact of who initiated what.
3

Oh yeah, I forgot the 4th sign that it’s a scam response:

  1. SHE’S ASKING FOR YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER BEFORE YOUR FIRST DATE!
4

Oh, dont get me wrong Boyo Jim, I had no doubt at all that it was a scam. And I used my spam account to e-mail her back. I just wanted her/him to know that it was obvious at least to me. Her site was a bit too conspicuously crafted to make her sound like an innocent college student just learning HTML and messing around with her first site (it really was brilliant as far as the image she portrayed). But no, it did not fool me. My reason for posting here was to ascertain just how the verification service ran “their” scam.

As for me saying “just in case she was for real” that was said fairly “tongue in cheek”.

5

Oh here is the link to that site in question: http://www.adultbureau.com/

Check the “webmaster” link for the most pertinent details.

I would be more of the opinion that they would sell your information to others discretely so that they could not be directly implicated in credit card fraud.

6

Read the fine print, in many cases these are free trials. They will offer a limited time for free in hopes that you forget to cancel and get charged $39.95 for their service later.

As frightening as it might seem, places can make alot of money on one of those emails. Like another thread I pointed out , if 5,000,000 emails are sent. IIRC on average 2% will open them (100,000), of those 2% will click through(2000), of those 2% might actually bite and sign up (40). 40x$39.95 = $1600. Users gets $600 (the $15 a pop) after a waiting period on credit card chargebacks.

Not a bad deal for finding a hot college student to pay $200 for a couple hours of lingere modelling and making a simple site.

7

Damn COOKIES!

Above post is Drachillix not Cyn

8

Or they simply disable the “cancel” form and ignore email and don’t provide phone information so you can’t cancel your account until it’s time to contest credit card charges.

-lv

9

For age checks credit cards can be a ‘soft’ proof of age.

In other words, if you have a credit card with a certain limit, then there is a 98% likelihood you are an adult. I mean, that’s just part of it : the part where age checks can be done using credit card authorization.

Of course the other dopers are hitting on other things the card can be tapped for…say 'cash!"