SpeedDater

I signed up on those Cupid plc websites in the past. It's a scam and let me explain their modus operandi. Most of the decent profiles are fake. They have profile images picked up from the Internet (and you can confirm this by reverse looking up the image on Google). It is definitely a fraud scheme. You will receive a lot of emails from many genuine-looking people till you sign up (all the content in the email will be hidden, the profile image of that person will be so tiny that you wont discern anything). Every day you will get an email you are popular and you should pay them money to contact people, all fake and obviously bots!

Once you sign up, these emails from seemingly real people stop coming. You can also notice that the profile images are photoshopped or fake (because they now let you see the bigger image). Most of the traffic that lands up in your inbox now is spam, sent by the website itself. They also automatically sign you up on their many sister websites (cupid.com, girlsdateforfree.com, datingforparents.com, uniformdating.com, loveagain.com, maturedatinguk.com etc…) and you start getting the same type of spam from them, all begging for you to sign up. Horrible extortion scheme. I am sure there are better ways of making money than playing with people's emotions. The profiles of the people are not genuine at all; they are all fake people who have posted their profiles. Messages before you sign up are definitely fake and bot generated.

After reading the post by mikw m. On this forum and watching BBC's
Panorama programme "Tainted Love: Secrets of the Dating Game", I decided
To check this website.

I was surprised to see that for speed dating events occurring in London
In three weeks time, there was the mention "Hurry, there are 3 people
Looking at this event."
I decided to focus on an event occurring in a few days and to monitor
The number of people looking at the event according to the website.
I have refreshed the page on various occasions and the number of "people
Looking at the event" oscillated between 3 and 6.
After all it was around 10pm in the UK and the event was taking place in
London so I thought this may be plausible.
I then checked at 4.30am GMT on the same night (week day) and there was
Then 5 people looking at the event!
I found this quite suspicious.
I have then done the following experiment. I browsed the website using
My iPad: 3 people were supposedly looking at the event. At the same
Time, I used my laptop, removed all cookies, and click on the event
Detail. I have done the same with my iPhone (Wifi off). I have also
Phoned a friend and asked him to click on the same event details from a
Different IP address.
I refreshed my iPad session: there were still 3 people supposedly
Looking at the event. I have closed my browsers on my laptop and iPhone
And asked my friend over the phone to do the same. I immediately
Refreshed my iPad session again: there were still 3 people supposedly
Looking at the event!
Then I knew there was something dodgy.
It seems that this is another Cupid plc trick to let potential customers
Think that the website is active and that they need to "hurry" to pay to
Secure an event. It seems that those numbers are randomly generated by
The website and are unrelated with that actual numbers of people
Browsing the event.

Booked and paid for a Speed dater event on their website speeddater.co.uk, which indicated "women sold out" when I got to the event there were 20 men and only 5 women and I was told that my place in the event was cancelled ("as I was 2 years older than the age range of the event", looks like the real reason is that they had so many men and only few women that it was unworkable). Refused to give me a refund and had the cheek to charge me a monthly subscription for their website. It turnout that this is another Cupid PLC scam

I am annoyed by this website emailing me with "someone has viewed my profile" I don't know who placed me on this site it certainly wasn't me, I complained to them and they have chosen to ignore my comments and do nothing about securing their website, are they placing the adverts themselves in the hope that so many will join? They had got my age wrong and put that i lived somewhere near to where I used to live, how do they get this information? They also knew of an old password I used on other sites!