I am a member of an online dating site . I often get obvious form responses from "women " encouraging me to check them out at an " adult personals" forum. It’s , of course, spam. I now recognize the form letter and avoid. I have also gotten responses from women (nearly always an obviously professional photo of a strikng woman) who write in terrible broken english and use words that are just not right in context. They refer to a persons body as a "structure", etc. These I have found to be scams originating in africa, usually Nigeria. i don’t open them anymore either. But I also get responses which are almost normal. The problem is they don’t refer at all to what i wrote to them, nor use my name. They include a request to write to them on their personal mail address ( always yahoo or hotmail). Because of the vagueness in their notes to me, I somehow think something is amiss. I haven’t responded to them. If i write to a yahoo/html addy, can they get my personal info, ID, or anything?
The ones asking me to join an adult site are obviosly straight foreward solicitation. The African ones I now know about because after the first one ( a heartbreaking tale of an American woman who was visiting Nigeria with her family when they got into a car wreck. The whole family died except fot this poor girl who woke up in a Nigerian hospital, knowing no one and unable to pay her 10,000 dollar bill. She is stuck there until some kind American bachelor like myself will send her the cash, whereupon she will return stateside and have my babies. ) No , I’m not kidding. I researched it and it turns out Nigeria is a hotbed of online scams. But the new ones with the normal address but the not quite right letters I can’t figure. I’d love to open one so I can find out and warn other people if it is indeed a scam. My computer knowlege isn’t huge so I just don’t know what someone can learn from someones e-mail addy. Anyone got some beta for me?

Is that a bad thing?

If you advertised in the personals on craigslist, what were your responses & experiences like?

I put an ad there lol. I’m getting replies but not answering but maybe one or two so far. I’m not saying much. Because I dont know these people. Just trying to keep it light & start conversation slow. I really just want an online chat buddy, never know what that can lead to. I tried eHarmony & that other singles dating service too but I didnt reply to the response I got.

Can anyone tell me what their experience was if they did anything on these sites in the personals?
LOL, Loving Father you are so right. You can meet so many crazies & nutcases right here in your home area, at the bars, at the clubs, in your building where you live, at work (i.e., disgruntled employees), or at school (i.e., the VA Tech killer), even people you grew up with and known all your life and in worst cases, family members.

I’ve used the online dating service "Personals" and sent canned messages to a few girls I’m interested in but I do not get any response. Has anyone used this before and gotten anything? Is this a way of saying "not interested"? There’s a woman that I saw on the service that has me awestruck. Is she real? Do online services plant phonies to draw in customers? If so, have they ever been sued? I once signed up for the service for a 6 month period and didn’t have much luck. I got some emails that were very vulgar. So, bad I reported them. The woman looked like a nice person but they were tramps. I couldn’t believe some of things they said.