Fitness-Singles.com Spam

I came home today to an email welcoming me to Fitness-Singles.com (or fitnesssingles.com as is used on the email, which redirects to the first address):

The thing is, I didn't sign up or visit the site, and I've never visited it. Note the plaintext password in the email. That's a huge security no-no. There was also no confirmation email, to verify that the person creating the account owns the email address, another security no-no.

The reason that is bad is that a scammer might set up accounts for email addresses they have on a spam list, and some of those victims will log in using the username and password the scammer created, conveniently sent back to the victim. With online dating, security, screening, and trust is are big things that a web site should want to emphasise, and this site seems to be ignoring simple security best practices.

Another strange thing is the message at the bottom about unsubscribing. I get those messages on marketing emails, but not in emails referring to bona fide membership of sites. So I suspect this is a marketing exercise from Fitness-Singles.com rather than something a third party scammer set up. The aim would be to make it as easy as possible for people to get on the site, but at the expense of standard security practices.

I then did some Googling. Look at this from their FAQs:

Are your members for real?

Absolutely.  All profiles are user generated and we are extremely diligent about removing any profiles that are misleading or created for purposes other than finding an activity partner or a date. Our editorial staff monitors profiles 24/7 and will intercept any profile we deem questionable before it enters the community.

Occasionally, if a profile is approved that turns out to be phony or an attempt to spam, we move quickly to remove it from our community. If you come across any of these profiles, please contact us to report them immediately to our profile evaluation team and we will review the member in question promptly.

Oops! How can this be taken seriously when 'members' can receive emails such as the above from them?

So maybe there's a difference between accounts (one of which I apparently have been given) and profiles, which possibly I don't have because I wouldn't have filled one of those out. So if a spam membership email doesn't result in an active profile, then they could still claim their profiles are real. But email number two was also waiting for me when I got home:

Oops! It looks like my 'profile' can be seen by other members, if that email is to be believed. And notice the lack of spam unsubscribe message.

Almost the end of my outraged whinge. But what's this? I have a new message from some bronzed Adonis!

Note the unsubscribe message is back. There's even a "this email may contain advertisements", which might suggest that not all profiles are genuine, or that the person behind that genuine profile didn't really send a message, it's just an inducement to get me to create a profile.

Then Email #4 in 24 hours then said that a member has requested my photo. I bet.

On their home page, it says they're a BBB-accredited business. So will send BBB a link to this post. If anyone from Fitness-Singles.com would like me to delete this post, I'm more than happy to do that if you stop doing this kind of stuff.