Quechup.com — online dating gone spammy

UPDATE: This item has been amended and corrected. Please see this post for the sordid details. – rxc

Frequent Cringe contributor D. F. draws our attention this morning to the curious saga of Quechup.com, a dating/social network based in the U.K.  Pronounced ‘ketchup’, the site calls itself “The ‘Sauce’ For Meeting People – Socialise, Make Friends, Date.”

Aside from the silly tagline, Quechup has drawn the ire of hundreds of lonely bloggers by surreptitiously squeezing email addresses out of them.

When you sign up for the site it prompts you to share your address book so you can find out which of your 10,000 close personal friends is also trolling for dates on Quechup. But instead of presenting you with a list of friends, Quechup sends an invite from you to everyone in your book — making you look like a nasty purveyor of pork.

Since the outcry, Quechup has modified its ‘viral’ techniques somewhat. The ‘Who do you know on Quechup?’ page now warns you that “by inviting contacts you confirm you have consent from them to send an invitation,” which isn’t exactly the same as saying “We’re about to ransack your email address book like frat boys after a kegger,” but is better than nothing.

Glenn Finch, VP of parent company iDate Corp.,  won’t say more on the record, though an official statement from them is pending. Moral of this story? Shopping for dating services is a lot like shopping for dates; if somebody looks, sounds, or acts like a creep, chances are they probably are one — regardless of how much they swear they’ve changed. Quechup just doesn’t cut the mustard.

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