Husband Receiving Suspicious Email

Diane Taylor

New Email
My husband just got an email from Match.com about singles in our area. He got it on his company iphone emails which are on his work computer. Could you please tell me if that means that he was on something that he should not have been on. He swears that it is just junk mail and that he was not on anything inapropreiate. Please tell me if he can get these emails, without being on these sites, or is he looking. The truth will be deeply appreiciated. Thank you!
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Hi Diane,

This should be easy to figure out if you take a closer look at the email.

Is the email really from Match.com to one of their users and using unique information about him in the email, or is it spam with an affiliate link that makes the sender money if he happened to click through and register for the service?
 

Diane Taylor

New Email
It said Match.com and that there were 40 singles in his area. I opened it and clicked on something that opened to facebook. He has told me before that he doesn't have a facebook account. It is a company iPhone that is attached to his computer at work. Please reply
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
You don't have to be logged into Facebook to view a page on Facebook.

Are the links all match.com or some other URL branded to look like match.com?

What's your gut say?
 

Diane Taylor

New Email
Please help me, because I want to believe him, but I have my doubts. Does it mean that he was browsing something, or could that just have happened anyway. You can probably tell that I am not to bright with things like this. Could it have been innocent. Thank you
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
There isn't enough information for me to comment with any certainty either way.

Do you still have access to the email?
 

Diane Taylor

New Email
No I don't, but I got onto Match just now on Facebook. I signed in with his email address from work and his password and I got in. Does that mean that he has an account under his work email address? It said connect with friends. Why was I able to get on under his Email and password?
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Did you login with his info or did you accidentally create an account?

Is there any indication it's an existing profile vs. a new profile?

You could make a fake profile and send his account a message and see if he replies?
 

redwicked

New Email
Match.com is very popular amongst email marketers. A client of mine has made quite a bit of money promoting them via email.

The reason I am saying this is because their emails are not all the same. Some emails are "promotional" emails and some are "transactional" emails. I know you said you are not good with this sort of things but take a second to think about this (i also read that you don't have the email anymore so just try to remember as best as you can). Was the email asking you to join the site or say something like "Click/Join here to meet up with singles in your area"? This would be a promo email, just like any billboard you see on the high way advertising their company. Your husband doesn't necessarily have to have been on a site he shouldn't have been on. Email marketers have a tendency of trading email lists and promoting different offers to this data. So your husbands email could have been traded or sold to another email marketer. And this can be the explanation. Of course I wont lie, there is also the flip side. Some dating sites like Match.com own OTHER dating sites such as "christiansingles.com (not saying match.com owns this site, its just an example of one company owning another company) and since the company owns both sites they will use email databases from one side on another site in hopes that the person will sign up to the other site since they have shown interest in online dating. (this is marketing after all)

However if it was a "transactional" email, aka a receipt or message directly from match.com to its user that means he has an account there and either Match.com is sending him some sort of email such as an alert or notification (sometimes they will send emails when you receive private messages on the site itself. just as a way of letting you know so you can log on and read the messages) another type of email they can possibly send is an transactional email concerning the account holders subscription. Maybe it's time for the account owner to renew their subscription with match.com or their credit card is about to be billed in the next few days and they are emailing the account owner to notify them of this.

As you can see the two are very different. The promo email could just be a marketing email (and like i said it doesn't mean he was browsing some site. you don't get emails from just browsing sites, an action has to take place for this to occur. The owner of the email has to have signed up via a form or something along those lines for his email to get into the hands of the person that sending the email messages. Things don't "just" happen. It doesn't work that way. Of course without knowing more info about this email its hard to say. You just have to remember and go into detail about what kind of email it was for us to help you.
 
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Diane Taylor

New Email
Thank you for all the info. All I can remember is that the email was in his inbox. It said Match. view singles in your area. I opened it up and clicked on it and it said that he could browse 26 singles in Erie Pa. I opened that up and it brought me to Facebook to sign in or up, I can not remember. I confronted him and he said that he has never been on Facebook or Match and was not looking. It is a company iPhone connected to his work computer. He said that that should have gone to junk mail but that it must have slipped through. I am suspicious because Facebook came up. I think that he might have been on Facebook just browsing when he should not have been. Please answer all this the best that you can. Could he have just been on Facebook for news or sports and still have received an email from Match because he was on Facebook, or would he have had to been directly on Match? How did they find out where he lived? Would not he have had to enter an area code in order for them to have found singles in his area or can they find out that info anyhow? Thank you and please reply as soon as possible.
 

redwicked

New Email
I think it was just a promotional email. The reason they found out where your husband lives is most likely because YOU clicked on the ad. When you clicked on the ad it fired what is called a tracking pixel. In layman's terms this is technology used by email marketers. Anytime someone clicks on one of the images in the email is will send a report to the person sending the message. These reports can range anywhere from the geo-location, the IP address, the state, the browser (Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer) used when clicking on the image and a few other metrics can be recorded as well.

This is fairly common amongst big data marketers. It's a simple marketing tactic. Once you click on the image in the email you will be redirected to a page in your browser with info such as your geo-location (your zip code in this case) then the person that the ad was meant for will show interest in the product because it promises/advertises they will find singles in that specific city. It's called "targeted-marketing" the more targeted it is (the more info they have on the person like the location, their preference of singles as in Males, or Females, their age, etc) the more likely it is that the person viewing the ad will find it more enticing and will likely sign up for the offer.

So I really think it was a promo email. But like i said you won't really know how that email marketer got the email in the first place. He could have registered on to a different dating site and the marketing division of that dating site used their current customers to promote other related products (in this case Match.com because anyone that registered for the dating site has shown interest in online dating so its more likely these emails will work in driving more sign ups/sales)

Your only other choice is to monitor his email activity and keep an eye out for the emails I told you about. Promo emails and transactional emails (a quick google of these terms might do a better job at explaining the difference) and in the meantime give him the benefit of the doubt.
 

treeearthsky

New Email
I have some experience with Match.com since my now ex was on that and a hundred other sites. I cant guarantee any thing, but. . .
This sounds like a promo. "that he could browse 26 singles in Erie Pa." If he was registered he would have already been able to browse all the singles in your area. They would not invite him to do so.
Match tends to send notifications that either the ad has been looked at or there has been a reply to the ad.
A lot of places have facebook or twitter links as is already mentioned here. It sends you to a facebook page that you can view. But you have to sign on to your email to make the link between them. If he was/is registered you will be able to find multiple crumbs.
There have also been instances of people registering friends and co workers and setting up accounts as a juvenile attempt to be cute.

Personally I can smell a rat. If I'm confused about what to believe, I will always chose to believe what makes me happy. Until I am faced with positive proof. Then I am never confused and act accordingly. At this point I would recommend you adopt this attitude.

Good luck
 
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