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Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

secretpoke.com

51–60 of 120 posts

Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

#51
I was all down for this, about to find someone to submit to, when I decided I'd take a look at what the crush is going to receive. The wording in the first sentence put me off. I would change "Someone has a crush on you, but is afraid to take the first step..." to "Someone has a crush on you and is wondering if you felt the same way..." or something like that.

The wording there prevented me from using the service.

Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

#52

Hi fellow HNers, I wanted to show you our new project: SecretPoke.com . As big shy people ourselves and with Valentine's day coming up, we wanted an easy, anonymous and fun way to reach out to our crushes :) We would love your feedback as much on the concept than on the execution (name, copy, design,...). We built it in less than 10 days and we are ready to modify the website quickly to take your feedback into accoun…

Before using it I would want to be reassured on two points:

1. I wouldn't feel very optimistic using such a site because I assume the emails you send will seem like spam and will be deleted by the recipients without much thought.

2. Using this site makes one vulnerable to cruel trolling. Imagine three or four people getting together, "secret poking" people they know, and sharing the results for shits and giggles. If I really need this site, am I brave enough to expose myself to that?

Personally, I couldn't use this service, because I'm beyond the age where it's acceptable to need it. I do feel like part of the target audience, though (especially ten-years-ago me) and am happy to be being served.

Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

#53
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoiding information leakage, whether in terms of error cases (e.g. incorrect padding on crypto showing a different error, leading to a padding oracle attack) or in terms of user-facing content (e.g. exposing whether or not a username or email exists in the system) can be difficult. That said, you should always err on the side of showing a single message rather than multiple -- in this case, always show success. This…

Ew no, don't always show success, there surely has to be a more elegant solution. I have multiple email addresses and sometimes I'll use a different one for a different service, if I enter email@website.com when I used email@anotherwebsite.com and you show success when it's the wrong one, I'll be waiting for an email that will never appear... Maybe HN can work out a good solution collectively? I can only think of a s…

How about show success, but adjust the confirmation e-mail accordingly. For example, if the e-mail address is not registered you could say something like "We received a request to recover your password on our service but see that you are not registered for our service with this e-mail address." ?

Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

#55
post #31

Ok, let me see. Back in 2005 a friend sent me one of these crush anonymously. I didn't want to guess on the site who it was, but I wanted to know who it was. They had this feature where you enter your email if you forgot your password. So, I thought to myself, not many of my friends would know about this site and whoever it is was probably the only person of my friends to be on it. So, I enter the list of female frie…

Please DON'T do that. Don't type people's email addresses into whatever forms you come across online.

Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

#56
post #34

The tone of the site is a little too business-ish. I can't pinpoint how, but (colors aside) it has the form of a business product like basecamp. Take a good look at http://www.hotornot.com/ . I don't have the design chops to explain why, but that site comes across as less serious. If you can find more fun consumer sites that have been successful you should be able to identify some common design techniques.

I think it's the background-on-a-background. I see a rectangular white area behind the content and a light grey background surrounding the white area. The whole thing should be white so the pieces of the page seem like they are naturally grouped together instead of trapped and constricted together inside the little white rectangle.

Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

#57
post #55
post #31

Ok, let me see. Back in 2005 a friend sent me one of these crush anonymously. I didn't want to guess on the site who it was, but I wanted to know who it was. They had this feature where you enter your email if you forgot your password. So, I thought to myself, not many of my friends would know about this site and whoever it is was probably the only person of my friends to be on it. So, I enter the list of female frie…

Please DON'T do that. Don't type people's email addresses into whatever forms you come across online.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

#58
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoiding information leakage, whether in terms of error cases (e.g. incorrect padding on crypto showing a different error, leading to a padding oracle attack) or in terms of user-facing content (e.g. exposing whether or not a username or email exists in the system) can be difficult. That said, you should always err on the side of showing a single message rather than multiple -- in this case, always show success. This…

Ew no, don't always show success, there surely has to be a more elegant solution. I have multiple email addresses and sometimes I'll use a different one for a different service, if I enter email@website.com when I used email@anotherwebsite.com and you show success when it's the wrong one, I'll be waiting for an email that will never appear... Maybe HN can work out a good solution collectively? I can only think of a s…

A possible solution is to get the email account holder to send an email to lostpassword@website.com. Auto-reply with a password reset form, or a welcome email in the case with no existing account (maybe you could fast-track account creation here, with a link "Oops, please delete this account. I didn't mean to do that.").

It doesn't really solve the problem of figuring out which email address you used to create your account, but it allows you to provide feedback to the user that the account does/does not exist.

An alternative solution would be to just email whatever account you enter on the website, with the appropriate wording depending whether or not they have an existing account, but this approach seems like it'd be too easy to spam random people.

Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

#59
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ew no, don't always show success, there surely has to be a more elegant solution. I have multiple email addresses and sometimes I'll use a different one for a different service, if I enter email@website.com when I used email@anotherwebsite.com and you show success when it's the wrong one, I'll be waiting for an email that will never appear... Maybe HN can work out a good solution collectively? I can only think of a s…

How about show success, but adjust the confirmation e-mail accordingly. For example, if the e-mail address is not registered you could say something like "We received a request to recover your password on our service but see that you are not registered for our service with this e-mail address." ?

That's good; that'll mean fishing expeditions like this will warn the, er, fish.

Re: Show HN: my new project, an anti-snub dating site

#60
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ew no, don't always show success, there surely has to be a more elegant solution. I have multiple email addresses and sometimes I'll use a different one for a different service, if I enter email@website.com when I used email@anotherwebsite.com and you show success when it's the wrong one, I'll be waiting for an email that will never appear... Maybe HN can work out a good solution collectively? I can only think of a s…

How about show success, but adjust the confirmation e-mail accordingly. For example, if the e-mail address is not registered you could say something like "We received a request to recover your password on our service but see that you are not registered for our service with this e-mail address." ?

I considered this, but it makes an easy way for someone to cause the site problems. I guess coupled with captcha it could work, but someone could send a lot of emails to different people, if enough mark it as spam they might have problems as it is TECHNICALLY unsolicited, but I guess at the same time I could do the same with registering...
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