Nobody is sharing experiences, opinions about you

Thanks for the article on ‘sharing experiences about you’. I got that stupid email today. Your article put my mind at rest.

thanks!

I’m still getting them with many varied wordings. Glad you checked. I feel sorry for the folks who fall for it.

Phew. I usually think I’m pretty savvy but this one made me nervous. Google led me to this entry and I feel better now. Thanks, man! Nice of you to warn us.

I was just about ready to sign up for shareyourexperiences.com when I found this entry via Google, along with a few other posts similar.

I have to hand it to the spammers, this one was pretty sophisticated. Better than most of the junk I get.

I’ve had 3 such emails in the past few days.

I spent a few hours wondering who it was who was close to me socially that needed an anonymous website to find information about me.

Now I know.

No-one.

I was suspicious…. being busy and with a 15 month old baby…… what’s a social life????

Makes you wonder who’s behind it and why.

Just people who want to be able to charge your credit card. It is there way of making a living.

This got me (but not my money) for a few days. Just happened at a time when someone really might have been taking retribution against me for being a whistleblower. Caused some real distress. At best this is gossip, slander, libel, defamation. At worst, the post I was notified about was probably put there by the website itself.

Heh, I was pretty worried about this one too but was wondering whether this was some kind of scam. The outright truculence of the FAQ section annoyed me too - “we know the law inside out, f* you if you don’t like it etc etc.”

Anyway, I looked up the guy who runs the site - anyone live near Wilmington, Delaware fancies popping in and “sharing a few experiences” with Mr John Torrey? :P

Although the guy who runs the bogus shareyourexperiences.com has a Wilmington, DE address, the phone # has a 516 area code. That’s Long Island, NY. Strange.

Our Web site, Shareyourexperiences.com, is absolutely not a scam as some irresponsible slanderers assert. Shareyourexperiences.com is a valuable research tool, and our team has worked hard to create a legitimate, and highly useful, resource.

My name is John Torrey, and as the chief executive officer of Shareyourexperiences.com I feel the need to issue this response to defend our product, and assure our users that they are contributing to a valuable meeting place for people around the world.

Our accusers, while not even providing one verifiable piece of evidence to support their claims, suggest that Shareyourexperiences.com is a scam. Unfortunately, a lot of people have taken their word as gospel, and have not bothered to check the truth. In fact, that is the purpose of Shareyourexperiences.com - to introduce people to one another who can share common experiences (both positive and negative) so that everyone can make more informed decisions.

The root of the problem, it seems, is our site’s similarity to another, Wordofmouthresearch.com. A quick search on the Internet shows that the slanderers disparaged that site and are now trying to do the same to Shareyourexperiences.com. Both sites serve similar purposes (though I would say ours is better) but have fallen victim to an unexplained campaign of distortion and falsehood.

We have tried hard to track the perpetrators of the lies against Shareyourexperiences.com, and have found out that the culprits form a small group of approximately 3-5 Internet users. For whatever reasons - perhaps users of our service identified them as people of ill repute - they have decided to damage our reputation in order to save theirs. They post accusations that our Web site is a scam, and then hope that in so doing Shareyourexperiences.com will be shut down.

The ultimate losers in this campaign, if they are successful, are ordinary everyday people like you and me, who seek to find others who have information to share about people, businesses and more. By posting their lies on online forums, these slanderers are hoping that people will accept their statements as truth and discredit the site.

In fact, Shareyourexperiences.com is wholly legal within U.S. law, and is indeed an invaluable research tool. The site’s goal is to create a community of users who do not back down from or get cheated by liars and slanderers, and thus we will not shut down the site.

We are so confident of our value that we invite everyone to visit Shareyourexperiences.com to learn that the site is not a scam but an important tool and resource. It is free to check it out, and while we understand the concept may be difficult to grasp at first, we are certain that once people try it, they will see that Shareyourexperiences.com deserves to be used daily.

To summarize, I have full confidence in Shareyourexperiences.com, and I encourage you not to be dissuaded by slanderers who offer no proof to their allegations. Please feel free to contact us via our Support Page, which can be found at https://shareyourexperiences.com.

Sincerely,

John Torrey CEO Shareyourexperiences.com

Dear John Torrey,

Go to hell. Do you think anyone believes you? You claim the “perpetrators of the lies” are limited to “approximately 3-5 Internet users.” Oh please. Google turned up a metric fuckton of reports on you, including MIT and the venerated Snopes.com.

It’s a lovely little essay you’ve written there but it’s not convincing anyone.

FYI, your address is going straight to the FTC’s spam report list. Have fun.

Whatever you do, DON’T point your DOSbots at any of “John Torrey“‘s or “Scott Kucera“‘s IP addresses:

67.121.155.157

We wouldn’t want such a useful and valuable service to be rendered inoperable.

There’s another company on the net, called NC Software (www.logbookpro.com/Default.aspx), which ostensibly provides aviation software to pilots. The address under the “Contact Us” section is the same as “Torrey’s” Delaware address. This company also claims to not be able to provide phone support, as does shareyourexperiences.

Strange.

He may be trying to use Share Your Experiences to finance other projects.

I’m absolutely furious about this site. I found out about it when traveling to a country with bad internet connections and tried in vain to get more information. So, I stewed over this thing until I got back and read through the rather unprofessional prose (and childish) on the site. In ten years on the net, this is the first time I have ever been affected by spam and I DO want to prosecute! Advice is appreciated…

Q: Why would it be necessary for this Scum Spammer to keep changing his domain address and to keep writing from different IP addresses?

1) Because he is a Scum Spammer who keeps getting his domain blocked by e-mail service providers?

2) Because he is a Scum Spammer who keeps getting his domain registration revoked because the registrants keep getting sick of being inundated with complaints??

3) Because he is a Scum Spammer who keeps getting his servers shut down because of the quantity and nature of his mailings and because of the humongous number of complaints???

4) All three of the above.

Here is a short list of just SOME of the domains which are (or have been - because they’ve been shut down) associated with John Torrey and Share Your Experiences: bhimsa.com, experiencenotification.biz, experiencenotification.us, experienceshare.biz, experienceshare.us, experiencesharing.biz, experiencesharing.us, johntorrey.com, learning-web.biz, learning-web.us, qeps.com, qeps.net, qeps.org, share-experiences.biz, share-experiences.us, share-your-experiences.biz, share-your-experiences.com, share-your-experiences.net, share-your-experiences.org, share-your-experiences.us, share1.biz, share1.net, share1.org, share1.us, share2.biz, share2.net, share2.us, share3.biz, share3.us, share4.biz, share4.net, shareexp.biz, shareexp.us, shareexperience.biz, shareexperience.us, shareexperiences.biz, shareexperiences.us, shareopin.biz, shareopin.us, shareopinion.biz, shareopinion.us, shareopins.biz, shareopins.us, shareye.biz, shareye.us, shareyexp.biz, shareyexp.us, shareyourexperiences.com, shareyourexperiences.net, shareyourexperiences.org, shareyourexperiences2.com, shareyouropinion.biz, shareyouropinion.us, shareyouropinions.biz, sharingexper.biz, sharingexper.us, sharingexperience.biz, sharingexperience.org, sharingexperience.us, sharingexperiences.biz, sharingexperiences.org, sharingexperiences.us, sharingopinion.biz, sharingopinion.net, sharingopinion.org, sharingopinion.us, sharingopinions.biz, sharingopinions.com, sharingopinions.net, sharingopinions.us, sharyx.biz, sharyx.us, shyex.com, shyex.net, shyexp.com, shyexp.net, shyxe.us, shyxpe.us, and torrey.org

Here is an example of the false “contact” information he provides and if you scroll down to name server you’ll see what has happened to this account; “Suspended for Spam and ABUSE”. http://www.whois.sc/sharingexperience.us

Take a look at this: http://www.joewein.de/sw/spam-syex.htm

Here is quite a bit more about John Torrey, or Andrew Feinberg, or whatever his real name is:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030604154054/

http://security.ziffdavis.com/article2/0,3973,1111983,00.asp

http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/wordofmouth.asp

http://www.mit.edu/people/klund/files/shyexp.html

http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/bin/group.cgi?group=197

There’s another listing which gives Scott Kucera as the contact and lists a phone on Nassau, Long Island, NY (NY? I’m shocked!)

Brooks Fiber Communications is the carrier of this number (516) 214-8365.

Cell phone numbers usually are charged for all incoming calls, and the account holder also must pay for calls to his voice mail to retrieve messages. In case anyone were to want to free minutes, the office phone, etc, to leave him any, that is… : - )

This scam is a work of genius. They fake up a bunch of database entries, so we feel all special that people are talking about us, and our curiousity is aroused … who ARE these people who are talking about us?

Once we shell out the cash we can then get in touch with them. This is the brilliant part - since the site itself contains no actual information, just the facility to contact the “gossipers” by double-blind email it is impossible to prove that you’ve been scammed. If no-one responds … well it’s not the site’s fault.

They use what looks like a real name, address and contact number. The site has realistic trimmings. The owner responds hotly to criticism on blogs (admittedly with the same copy-pasted text each time). They’ve even put out press releases to add an air of authenticity to the whole thing.

Pity they sent the email to my spam harvester email address. Kinda spoiled it.

Just send the spam email to spamcop and hope to get it into the DNS blacklist. Somehow, my triple line of defense (DNS blacklist, filter rule, Bayesian filter) didn’t pick this up and autodelete. Disappointed.

well..well.. Was I ever behind the times, and caught at a vulnerable moment, too.. trial pending - (no, not criminal court). If prices aren’t listed in the “terms of service”, I always assume it’s a scam, and because this one catches such a personal level.. I still wasted 2 hours I didn’t really have.. checking it out. John, to you- I pray for a stiff lesson in scruples, morals, ethics, responsibility, .. only a sociopath would be so content to leave people worried, even frightened, and profit from it. Thank heavens your weapon is a computer, and not a butcher knife.. In a different time, before keyboards and internet, your conscience is the type that would have left you free to be a rapist. Glad you got rich off this, is the money worth it when you worry about defending yourself constantly? Peace of mind is a lovely thing to have… but .. you wouldn’t know