You know the handwriting’s on the wall when a personal ad I respond to on Craigslist turns out to be spam.  Whoops. 

Now before you start ragging on me for surfing Craiglist, I was bored, ok?  BORED.  I was checking out apartment prices and then out of curiousity (and absolutely nothing else) I checked out the personals for my area.  That’s when I came across this one:

Okay so here is the deal: I am an attractive 28 year old woman who tends to attract emotionally unavailable men….of course! So basically I am trying this out too see if this “dream guy” actually exists. I would be interested in a man who is attractive (I am a face person) with a great smile/great teeth. I tend to be attracted to men who are not thin or overly muscular. I like a man to have a little meat on his body. I love to laugh and am looking for someone who can make me laugh. I am a born again Christian and would like him to be the same. I love music and love to sing. I also love animals and could not imagine someone not loving them too! I am fairly low maintainance (who also may not be able to spell the word…HAHA). I am somewhat of a homebody and dont need to go out all the time. I am interested in a man who is caring, thoughtful, a “team player”, handy, outgoing, moderately successful, and “real”. I am a very genuine person who’s biggest weakness is my “big heart”. I am thoughtful, caring, and have been told I can “light up a room”. Being my own worse critic I would like to be a little thinner. However, I do have great curves and the softest skin! I came to this website because I really believe that I am a “great catch”. PS) hair is red by choice not by nature!

Seems like a nice enough girl right?  So I emailed her and asked her how strong she considered her Christian beliefs to be.  I got a response shortly afterwards:

Hi, I got your email and wanted to get back with you to see if you might still be interested.  I know you don’t know much about me but you can at least go see what I look like at http://www.eimages.info/barbera21. I posted them on this free site to make this whole “getting to know you” thing a little easier.  Just tell me what you think & if you want, a little about yourself and we will go from there.  Thank you.

When you click on the link however, it actually turns out to be a phony one and is in fact a redirected AFFILIATE link that takes you to the signup page of a dating site.

This whole time I had been communicating with an automated script that had been set up by an affiliate marketer spammer. 

I should have had the foresight to Google some of the phrases in the Craigslist ad to see if it showed up elsewhere, and sure enough the exact same wording shows up on a profile page at PlentyofFish, only this time she hails from Michigan.

Sigh.  And people wonder why I’ve become so bitter and cynical in my old age.

I consider myself to be a somewhat intelligent person, and if I got fooled by this, I’m sure many others have as well, especially as these bottom feeding scum of the earth affiliate marketers get more and more sophisticated in using deceptive methods to make money.  Just make sure, if you experienced something similar and you were tricked into clicking on an affiliate link that leads to a signup page, flush the cookies in your browser, so even if you happen to sign up for that very site in question a few months or so down the road, the spammer won’t get credit for it (affiliate links typically insert cookies into your browser that can last several months to over a year.  Read my article on affiliate spam for more info.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be drowning my sorrows in Dairy Queen’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard.  Oh wait, there’s no Dairy Queen around here.  Sigh, not even this huh, Lord?