Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation • Hacker News Board

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#41

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:30 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #35

robocat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately most consumers are unwilling to pay what something is worth to them. Businesses are often the same so it isn't just consumer behaviour. Meeting the right person should be worth a lot, and we should be happy to pay thousands for that. Of course the profit depends on the user statistics too: I'm not sure what the economic term for profit thresholds for power law masses versus targeting - where say lots of…

> Meeting the right person should be worth a lot, and we should be happy to pay thousands for that. We're happy to pay much more than thousands to marry the right person. Meeting the right person doesn't do anything for you; why would you pay thousands for it?

[deleted]

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#42

Post by RandomBacon » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:33 AM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #33

kxrm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had the same problem with Peacock despite constantly attempting to unsubscribe and mark spam. In the end I just created a filter rule to throw it in spam.

If you're in the US, I've had success by contacting customer service and threatening action under CAN-SPAM. The FTC has never really provided an easy way to file complaints or request enforcement by the public, but it seems to get their attention all the same. Now is a good time to try to exercise your legal rights against corporations before they are all executive order'ed away.

What action were you threatening? When I looked into it, it seemed like only state Attorneys General could sue violators.

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#43

Post by HappMacDonald » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:35 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #35

robocat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately most consumers are unwilling to pay what something is worth to them. Businesses are often the same so it isn't just consumer behaviour. Meeting the right person should be worth a lot, and we should be happy to pay thousands for that. Of course the profit depends on the user statistics too: I'm not sure what the economic term for profit thresholds for power law masses versus targeting - where say lots of…

> Meeting the right person should be worth a lot, and we should be happy to pay thousands for that. We're happy to pay much more than thousands to marry the right person. Meeting the right person doesn't do anything for you; why would you pay thousands for it?

Well, you can't marry who you never meet. What would it be worth for you to pay a bribe to a time traveler not to go into the past to prevent your parents from ever meeting? ;)

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#44

Post by shakna » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:36 AM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #30

Moosdijk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t de email domains get blacklisted or are they valid?

It's just fastmail.com, that would be insane to blacklist. Also you don't really use these for sending, it's more for signing up for things and online shopping.

It certainly still happens though. [0]

[0] https://www.fastmail.com/blog/the-internet-blacklist/

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#45

Post by RandomBacon » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:37 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #35

robocat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately most consumers are unwilling to pay what something is worth to them. Businesses are often the same so it isn't just consumer behaviour. Meeting the right person should be worth a lot, and we should be happy to pay thousands for that. Of course the profit depends on the user statistics too: I'm not sure what the economic term for profit thresholds for power law masses versus targeting - where say lots of…

> Meeting the right person should be worth a lot, and we should be happy to pay thousands for that. We're happy to pay much more than thousands to marry the right person. Meeting the right person doesn't do anything for you; why would you pay thousands for it?

It made the news a while back when someone was offering $10k USD to anyone who introduced them to someone he would marry.

I would do the same, but I don't know how to make it feasible without sounding terrible.

I do often let people know I'm open to matchmaking if they know any women my age.

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#46

Post by HappMacDonald » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:39 AM UTC

RandomBacon wrote: post #17

kentonv wrote: post #15

Problem is, if you implement strict email verification, you lose users. Because that step of "please open your email and verify" is actually a big drop-off point in the funnel. No amount of "shaming" people over lax email validation is going to convince them to implement a change that loses them money . Don't get me wrong, I hate it too. Every single day I have to block about a dozen new sender addresses for services…

> The best you can hope for really is that they put a link in the email to disavow the account with one click. I've only seen a few companies do that but I really appreciate it! That's a great middle-ground, and I think I've only seen that once.

Such links might disavow in practice, or might alternately be used as "hey, this email address has a living person at the other end, update the alive status on your spam lists and sell the data point!"

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#47

Post by red369 » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:44 AM UTC

jayknight wrote: post #34

red369 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone signed up to Amazon with an email address of mine, and saved their credit card details. I couldn’t get any attention from Amazon, and just got generic responses telling me I could reset my password, etc. In the end, I signed up to Amazon prime, I think to test some reassurance they had given me - I wasn’t expecting it to work. The email saying I had just accidentally made a purchase with someone else’s credit…

I thought about doing something mildly nefarious with someone's PayPal account that they added my address to, but didn't want to chance legal problems. Instead I just logged into their account and removed my email address and logged out.

PayPal is certainly trickier. I felt more comfortable testing with buying Amazon Prime through an Amazon account, because it would be easy for them to refund.

I assume I thought of trying to remove the email address! :) I sometimes forget they’re not necessarily the only identifiers, and some accounts let you use a mobile number instead. Probably there wasn’t a mobile on the profile.

It would be nice if all accounts used a username, and allowed you to not have an email or phone if you tick a box saying “I don’t care if I get locked out of this account forever if I forget the password”.

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#48

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:49 AM UTC

Gualdrapo wrote: post #22

RandomBacon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably started when they sold to The Match Group a while back. I used it a little back in 2014, and again in 2021. The second time around, it was very different. I don't know of any dating companies that focus on matching people versus optimizing for revenue.

Are you implying there are companies that don't focus on optimizing for revenue?

[deleted]

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#49

Post by timewizard » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:51 AM UTC

dmd wrote: post #7

inetknght wrote: post #4

OkCupid is a terrible service. It disassociates real people who don't pay, and encourages fraudulent scams such as pig butchering. Bots are ridiculously easy to spot. You can end up in an endless loop of the same rejects unless you start blocking them.

On the other hand, I met my wife there and my two children wouldn’t exist if not for it. That said, the OkCupid of today and that of 2011 when I used it are probably quite different.

Your current children. It's highly possible that by now you would have had two other children. As you can tell, I do not myself, have children.

Re: Not OK Cupid – A story of poor email address validation

#50

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Mar 22, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #28

RandomBacon wrote: post #9

Companies that allowed others to create accounts with my email addresses: PayPal, Apple, Credit Karma, Walmart (I just forwarded the email to legal@ and they took care of that instance very quickly, kudos to that at least). Edit: Forgot to add TD Bank - I actually opened a case with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that regulates this bank. Companies that spammed me in the last 24 hours because they don'…

What email are you using that's so popular that dozens of people are (inadvertently?) entering it in all these businesses? Are you "john.smith@gmail.com" or something like that? I'm firstname@firstnamelastname.com, and I have had maybe a half dozen instances in the past decade.

I have first initial / last name at gmail for a common Irish name. My wife has first name last name.

There’s about a dozen people who routinely use my email address. The Washington post let someone subscribe for a year without any validation. One dude lost a job offer because they couldn’t contact him. One woman was the general manager of a factory and emailed “herself” with a VPN client and excel spreadsheet with passwords to access the factory’s IT and SCADA systems. A detective sent crime scene videos. The most recent is a guy in Scotland who isn’t paying his electric bill.

My wife had someone who has stolen her accounts via retail employee resets at CVS, Sephora and others. She’s an executive at a big wall st bank, and spends a lot on makeup - my wife got lots of points when she reset the Sephora account back.