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I received an email from Yahoo Personals which says that changing your profile nicname to your given name will make other members “more likely to contact you, reply to you and want to meet you.”
I had to look at the raw source of the email to make sure it wasn’t a phishing scam. The email comes from yahoo-email.com, not yahoo.com. The jury is out about this.
After that unsettling experience, my profile provided a link to a personality test, which I had already taken. The test is titled “Yahoo Personals Premiere, but I’m not a premiere member. Sloppy oversight.
Anybody at Yahoo Personals care to clear the air? Is this a scam or not?
Update: Rochelle at Yahoo tells me it is not a scam. “You can see the new field from the profile page (look at anyone’s profile) under the “About Meâ€? section–it’s just another optional information field in the profile. ”
[tags: scam, yahoo personals]
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Unfortunately, all of the links in their email are URLs to the same “yahoo-email.com” domain, making it appear more scam-ish. Not only that, each URL is cookie-tracked, allowing them to know exactly who has viewed which links– a technique frequently used by spammers/scammers.
The “First Name” feature simply allows users to add their first name as just another piece of profile information. It doesn’t replace the username.