Share Your Experiences Spam Scam
Yesterday, a comment was posted on RR…, supposedly from John Torrey, CEO of Shareyourexperiences.com, in response to myriad comments left by other visitors that the Share Your Experiences organization is a scam in the same manner as the seemingly defunct Word of Mouth Connection.
Unfortunately, I believe that John’s reply is just another set of lies — and that’s assuming that there really is a John Torrey behind this “new” entity. Given the history of the person or people behind WOMC and their propensity to use fake names, street addresses, and email addresses when registering the dozens of domain names used for the scam, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find out that John Torrey is just another pseudonym.
The first point of contention is that “John” states that “the root of the problem… is [his] site’s similarity to another, Wordofmouthresearch.com.” He continues to try to distance himself from Word of Mouth Research, otherwise known as WOMC, Word of Mouth Connection, and dozens of other aliases. The problem with that is that in March 2004, WOMC began the process of changing its name, probably due to the unerring bad press it had received. Now, emails that referenced Word of Mouth began coming from researchpeople.net, researchpeople.biz, backgroundresearch.us, find-the-truth.org, but still originating from the same IP addresses, setting a proven precedence of frequent attempts of hiding behind assorted entities and identities.
Torrey claims that Share Your Experiences doesn’t spam. Yet Wild West Domains, registrar of experiencenotification.biz, experienceshare.biz, experiencesharing.biz, learning-web.biz, share-experiences.biz, share-your-experiences.biz, and share1.biz (to name just a few of the many dozens of domains owned and registered by John Torrey and Share Your Experiences, or by Scott Kucera with the same mailing address of SYE) suspended all the above-mentioned domains, citing “spam and abuse”. Many of the spamming domains held by WOMC, including womc.info, word-of-mouth-connection.com, and womc.net are all hosted in Las Vegas by A+Hosting. Share Your Experiences just happens to host shareyourexperiences.com at the same ISP. Most WOMC spam emails are sent from Pacific Bell DSL accounts in Irvine and Pleasanton. Share Your Experience often sends spam emails from Pacific Bell DSL accounts in Pleasanton and neighboring San Francisco. Not one of those facts is dámnìng by itself, but each is a notch on the Belt of Coincidence.
In December 2003, I received an email from “WOMC Support Department” that claimed, “Someone has just begun to research your background via our website.” On that day, as quoted in my previous article, the Word of Mouth Connection website claimed that they “send an initial unsolicited email” and that their spam email “is not bulk mail because it is directed at one specific individual.” In May 2004, a RR… reader received an email originating from “SYEC Support Department” at shareyourexp.us that quoted “Someone has just begun the process of sharing opinions and experiences about you via our website.” And today, the Share Your Experiences website states that they “send an initial unsolicited email” and that their spam email “is not bulk mail because it is directed at one specific individual.” Sound vaguely familiar? Too exact for sensibility, but only one example of many instances. If these similarity were considered by themselves, Share Your Experiences could still claim separatism, and only be guilty of plagiarism.
In January 2004, a RR… reader received an email from WOMC that contained a link to “http://womexch.com/pass.php?a=search&b=5&c=[email address]“. In March 2004, someone else received an email from WOMC that contained a link to “http://womexch.info/pass.php?a=search&b=5&c=[email address]“. And in May 2004, a third email, this time advertising shareyourexp.us, linked to “http://8.shyexp.com/exec/1.php?a=search&b=5&c=[email address]“. While the domain and path information are obviously different, doesn’t it seem strange that two supposedly different companies would share the same input requirements of “a=search&b=5&c=[email address]“? If you know anything about web application development, you cannot reach any other conclusion other than that they are blatantly using the same web application, one developed in-house and not available or packaged elsewhere. If this fact stood alone without other similarities and if Share Your Experiences were to continue to assert itself as a separate entity, SYE might only be guilty of intellectual property theft.
Share Your Experience would have you believe that they are innocent, that this is all one big coincidence. Clearly, it is not.
Giving him what is in this case the ludicrous benefit of doubt, I publicly challenge the operator of the Share Your Experiences website the same public challenge I gave to Word of Mouth: grant me full free nondestructive (read-only) access to any and all his web and development servers and applications in order to ferret out the truth. I would even honor and sign both a non-compete agreement and a confidentiality agreement specific to the source code and any proprietary information. Per the agreement, the only information I would be allowed to publish or disclose would be related to architecture and methodology, as well as forensic data of specific test cases of my choosing.
One can hope, but I don’t expect “John” to take me up on the offer…
By the way, here is a short list of just SOME of the domains 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
As a final note, you do realize, “John”, that if you hadn’t visited my website to post such bold-faced lies in defense of your immoral scam that I wouldn’t have bothered “beginning the process of sharing opinions and experiences” about you, right? D’oh!!
NOTE: Folks, comment however you wish, but if you choose to leave copies of email headers and domain name registration details, please include only the most vital information, not the entire records. Thanks!
I got the email and, stupidly, clicked on the link. I guess it’s been a long time since I opened a spam email. (I almost deleted the dámn thing right away–should have.) The site seemed pretty scummy and didn’t make sense, but I put in a number of email addresses to put the listing for my own in context, mainly to figure out why my email address was there. Sadly, I think a few of those people are going to start getting shyex spam. I feel bad. Fortunately, some of the email addresses were dead. Hehehe. None of the email addresses I tried, including an address I have which gets hundreds of spams per day, showed up, but I did get one hit for billg@microsoft.com. Isn’t that sweet? Once I saw that, I decided it was a scam and found this site.
I received a couple of emails from share your experiences and wondered if it was legit - fortunately I found this site. Thanks. Can’t someting be done to shut these báštárdš down?
What happened to the Philippines connection? I’m in the Philippines right now and would love to send the cops over to him! I just got spammed by them and while I never click on links in emails EVER, I did visit their site by typing in their URL (sye4.com). Anna
I’m absolutely incredulous that whoever is running this chain of scams and sites can continue to operate while posting such lies on their sites. I run a small highly-targeted legitimate mailing list for a consulting company in an engineering-related field. I would be completely hosed if I “marketed” in the manner that “Torrey” does. What hope is there for legitimate mailers like ourselves when complaint after complaint after complaint is posted on usenet and websites such as this (and seemingly nothing is done)? Surely someone fed up enough has made attempts to put an end to this once and for all? It is people like “Torrey” who are making it darn near impossible for companies like ourselves to conduct legitimate email communications with our clients when very little effort is made by the powers that be to stop this abuse. Follow the money. Follow the abundance of evidence on the internet. Any State’s AG could put this to bed *today* if they gave half an effort. I just don’t get it. Somebody call Spitzer!!!!!!
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