DVDizzy Forum

Right. I receive an email from a girl called Maria Mifsud. I don't think I know her, but she probably is a friend of some of my friends - or perhaps goes to another school other than mine and knows some people from my Sixth Form and has their addresses as well as mine. Anyway, I regularly get emails from her (which are usually sent to loads of people simultaneously). This particular email reads:

Hi,

How are you all doing?

Lately I found this site. It's really cool, and so real ... no spams

Check the link out ... it's true! And amazing. Believe me!

http://www.crushbits.com/findcrush/816147

Take care, and see ya.

Maria

I clicked the link (a rarity, I usually send this stuff directly to the recycle bin), and the resulting website apparently is one of those gimmicks that "calculates" whether you're compatible with your crush ... or that sort of rubbish. Nevertheless, despite knowing it's a gimmick, I giggled and typed down my name. For the crush, I typed down a movie crush (like the thread on UD in which we type down our movie crushes), and the sex of the celebrity in that little box was male, seeing as I'm gay. Now at this point it must be clarified that I've outed myself to my family and UD, but not my friends or anyone else.

When I clicked submit, I got this screen:



I was furious. I was beyond furious. Although the whole affair was gimmicky, I had typed down a real crush in that box. And now this girl was receiving the information! Who gave her a right to trick people into revealing their secrets!? And who gave a right to the bloody bastards who made this site the ability to make people discover other people's secrets!? I felt utterly betrayed. I felt that this was in violation of my basic rights.

I created an account on the site, and sure enough when I sent a make-believe crush to myself, it turned up on a special page. Does this mean that now my friends and possibly the entire school community will start debating my sexual orientation?

How disgusting.

I guess I'm not too sure how that website works, but it's not cool for them to trick you and send it back to the person!

However, since you did type in a celebrity and not a person you know, it could just be played off as a joke. Well, in any event, I feel for you and hope for the best!

lol... That's pretty funny. But I only say that because something similar has happened to me in the past and I can look back and laugh at it.

Well, you can always just play it off that you knew it was a prank and that's why you wrote a guys name?

Did you only write down the celebrity's name and not also the name of someone you actually know? If so, I agree with xxhplinkxx in a sense- if anyone asks, you could just say, "I thought that it was a prank, so that's why I put so-and-so's name down."

@ Lordy, Plinky and Amy

I only wrote down the celebrity's name, but ... gngggngngngngngng ... I STILL FEEL MAD!! The prank is certainly funny, for the person who is not being pranked. Don't get me wrong, I have always loved pranks, jokes and basically being silly (when I was 9, a girl told me that my brain was upside-down). But this crosses the line of one's privacy.

Damn... I'd be furious too if it happened to me

But hey, maybe she'll keep it to herself?

Aw, what a breach of privacy.

Well, I'm off to send this to my friends. Ta.

SpringHeelJack wrote:Aw, what a breach of privacy.

Well, I'm off to send this to my friends. Ta.

Oh, come on! You're making me look like a cry baby!

JC...why did you even opened a mail from an unknown person?

Isidour wrote:JC...why did you even opened a mail from an unknown person?

Because she's on my contacts list and seems to be in contact with my friends ... so it wasn't like the usual spam email.

The email was sent to all these people:

[Lots of emails removed by Mod - the point still stands, one address out of about 50 was known to JC]

I now realise that the only address I recognise is the bolded one. Who is this Maria Mifsud? I could actually know her ...

Julian, I have been tricked by one of those things too, but it was through MySpace. Luckily, I didn't say anything that I would care if anyone else were to read. Sorry buddy, that sucks!

hey, at least no one take serious internet JC (hug)

clam down cute boy, by the way, where did you got that image, it's very nice

Wow, I'm sorry that happened to you.

I'm not gonna lie, I've done the same thing to two of my friends about two years ago. At first I was tricked, then I decided to try it out on my friends...and it worked. They actually thought it was real, but I kept their answers to myself.

If your friends find out about this, just laugh it off and say you knew it was a prank, and that you sent in joke answers because you knew it was fake.

Julian Carter wrote:

Isidour wrote:JC...why did you even opened a mail from an unknown person?

Because she's on my contacts list and seems to be in contact with my friends ... so it wasn't like the usual spam email.

The email was sent to all these people...

Julian, I know I don't know you, but just for privacy's sake, I think you should edit your post- when I didn't have an account, I could access everything on this site- which means someone without an account could get a hold of those emails.

Anyway, I know exactly how you feel. I got pranked by one of my friend's friends, who's I almost NEVER talk to, but is pretty popular- this was around 7th grade (I'll be 11th this year) and I put in my best friends' name (who at the time, I had REALLY liked), my "sorta-crush"'s name (friends, but just to see if we could be "compatible" as the site advertises- and then I put in a guys' name (another close friend)- this was back when I was REALLY confused about my sexuality, and just wanted to see if we were "compatible" (if we were, I would know I was gay, if I was more compatible with one of the girls, I would know for sure I was straight).

Anyway, when I had clicked the button (with excitement and fear- well, all that a 12 year old can feel) I almost slammed my laptop into the wall, when that screen popped up. I felt so violated, so exposed- and since they were all real names, there would be no excuse for it- no way out. Basically, everything JC was feeling (especially the part about the fear of being outed)- I felt, too.

I'm a little confused, though- in the first post, you said that you put in a celebrity name, and then you put in a real name, but then in your later posts, you said you only put in a celebrity's name. If it was the former, you're a lot luckier than I was- you could easily shrug it off the way everyone else had said. If it was the latter, people will probably still be a little suspicious, but you could probably get away with saying you knew it was a prank, and you just wanted to tease them/throw them off with completely false answers.

What I did was, the second I found out it was fake, I did another one, and put in all the names of female celebrities from my favorite show (Charmed, mind you. lol ), and then sent it in. Then, I emailed the girl who had sent it to me, told her something along the lines of "haha, i knew it was a prank, and just so you know, those are all the stars of Charmed!" or something, and I just hoped it sounded naive enough to believe. However, she never responded back, and never talked to me sense... but I do have people ask me if I'm gay at least once or twice every year or so, but that may not have anything to do with the "compatibility test", since it's been happening forever.

As for my sexual orientation, I'm (barely) 16, but I'm pretty sure that I'm gay. I've never done anything (like, y'know...), never had a girlfriend (or a boyfriend, for that matter) but I just... know. And I've felt this way for about... three years (so, about a year after this very incident). However, I've never told any of my friends or family- I think this is probably the closest I've come to outing myself...

Anyway, back on topic. Julian, I hope you're okay. As I said, I know exactly what you're going through, and hopefully, this girl will do what tsom did, and keep it to herself. Or, you might not even know her, and she might not even know you! You might not even have anything to worry about! But if you're like me, and you do know her, then all I can do is wish you the best of luck- just know that if you need someone to talk to, I'll always be around.

What a horrible prank.

I did some checking on this crushbits site, hoping to prove it was a hoax (thinking that since all the e-mails were hotmail, that it was some kind of spam site from hotmail). Unfortunately it isn't.

However, here's my original post before I found out it wasn't a hoax...(and of course, most of it seems pretty useless since I missed out on the last part of your post that said you created an account to check it too)

If I was able to prove the whole thing is a hoax of a hoax, I would have wrote: Jules, I wouldn't worry too much about this alleged "hoax"...

If you notice, all the e-mails that it was sent to (save for one) were for hotmail.com or hotmail.co.uk accounts. Then, if you check who all the info is sent to, it's always someone with a hotmail account (be it .com or .co.uk).

Look at the number after "findcrush" on the link...

http://www.crushbits.com/findcrush/816147 - that goes to Maria Mifsud

But if you change the number, you get someone else...

http://www.crushbits.com/findcrush/1 - yes, just "1". It goes to someone named "Aqeel"

http://www.crushbits.com/findcrush/293855 - this is "Sussan Tran"

http://www.crushbits.com/findcrush/293 - this is "Chris Drury"

I then tried it with this well-known number

http://www.crushbits.com/findcrush/8675309

And found that it goes to the same basic template, but WITHOUT a person's name or e-mail.

Given that every e-mail is for hotmail (except for one in yours), it's pretty much proof that the site is nothing but spam and NOTHING is really sent out to the person. They probably were able to get a complete list of hotmail accounts and assigned each one of them a number, then would spam your inbox pretending to be a friend of yours. If this prank is sophisticated enough, it probably localizes the hotmail accounts and in your case, picked a random bunch in Malta.

BTW, I checked several search engines for "Maria Mifsud", and found that she's got a Malta facebook. Whether or not she actually knows you, I have no idea.

Anyway, I set up an account (my number was 846450), then went to the site and filled in info (just "asdf" in all the boxes, even I wouldn't risk it to my own e-mail).

And then I checked my e-mail...and got this response...

Hi Albs.

asdf has fallen for the prank.

You can see his/her reply at:
http://www.crushbits.com/member.php

Enjoy,
CrushBit.com Team

When I checked the site, ---

At that point, I found that the replies are sent to the crushbit account, though they're at the bottom of the page, making some (me, initially) think that it really was a spam site, as there were a bunch of ads and just more "prank your friends!" links.

But yeah, the answers are at the bottom of the page (mine's so funny as it says "asdf's responses" or something, and all the crushes are "asdf", "asdf", and "asdf".)

So...yeah...horrible prank. Crushbits should be crushed to bits...

Also, I agree with Vermin Friends, you may want to remove the other people's e-mails. I have no idea who they are, but a spammer visiting the site looking for more addresses would consider it a goldmine.

Albert

Yeah they tried to do that prank to me at school to find out my girlfriend's last name, but I didn't fall for it, I'm sorry about that incident, but you know since you wrote the name of someone famous you can just say that you knew it was a prank and couldn't think about someone so he happened to be on MTV or whatever so you thought it would be funny if you wrote his name down. Just make sure if your friends find out don't get mad or annoyed just laugh with them they won't think you were serious.

This is so weird - it makes be feel really insecure about the future of the internet. I know its good for so many things but this is surly an indicator of its bad points

Honestly, that sounds like a prank I would pull on people whom I like, to which they would react immaturely and I would be amused.