About 7 months ago I met a woman that lives in Russia almost by accident. I joined a free social networking site called, badoo, and I discovered that I could search various countries and regions. I tried Russia and began to talk with a woman in the belgorod region. We have been talking ever since. The weird thing is that she doesn't speak English and I don't speak Russian so we have to use online translators to communicate. If you want to read more about our story you can see it at privetanna1955

Interesting that this person uses a new name now.. Anna privetanna!

I've heard of Anastasia Teemchyk and Yulia Bagdieva and Anastasia Kaznowa, oh .. also Evgenia Zeliaeva and she (it) writes exactly the same letters as Elena Smirnova.

it was my own FSB that reminded me that it was model/actress Valentina Zelyaeva:

I must be honest, Anna is a very private person and she did not want me to put her photo on the site. So it was her choice to put a photo of someone else on the site. Trust me Anna is much more attractive than this model and I would rather use her picture but I respect her privacy. That is why I had to put a picture of someone else on there. I hope you all understand.

On a side note, I did not use a dating agency site to meet her. I met her on a free social networking site and we video chat every day for over 2 hours on Skype. Her children walk by and wave to me so she is as real as any FSW can be. She is not a poor woman that wants to come to the U.S. She was actually married to a man that was quite wealthy there in Moscow but he passed away from pneumonia. So please do not assume because the photo is of a model that it is because I am being foolishly lost in a world of illusion because that is not true. privetanna1955

let's google Valentinas agent's email address and ask him.
take your badoo spam somewhere else Pal.. no-one here is convinced, seen it, heard it, done it...

at you in your cowboy hat

to Roy (Amorus) who nipped this in the but very quickly and alert me yesterday. Now while we were in bed.... here in the UK, Bryan tried to brake through the security post number we have in the system for such cases, to be able to continue on the next stage of his spamming operation, harvesting the emails of our members...... but Amorus and Luckyspin spoiled his chances... and I finished the job, clearing all his links.

The posts below explain everything you need to know about Badoo.from the site:
http://www.mywot.com/en/forum/7714-badoo-at-it-again

Jazspeak on Sun 19 Sep 2010 11:40:48 PM UTC

Badoo at it again

It would seem that Badoo have recently been harvesting the address books of those with gmail and googlemail accounts, and then using the harvested e-mail addresses to send spam.

This came to light when I received an e-mail purporting to have come from a friend but when I queried the e-mail it was confirmed that his address book had been harvested.

I made some further checks and it looks as though the Badoo site is also involved in phishing. This phishing was confirmed when I went to the site and was repeatedly requested to enter credit card details in order to change some account settings (obviously I didn't give any real details).

FBIG on Mon 20 Sep 2010 02:49:24 AM UTC
And just what does Badoo *do*?

Jazspeak,

What in the heck does Badoo do to earn your ire, and what do we, as savvy MyWot users need to do about it?

Jazspeak on Mon 20 Sep 2010 10:14:37 AM UTC
@ FBIG

Badoo harvests e-mail addresses from gmail and googlemail address books. If you have an account with gmail or googlemail then you should take steps to protect the address books and/or contact lists to prevent spamming by Badoo.

BTW - Badoo.co.uk and Badoo.com have previously been identified as a source of spam.

Jazspeak on Mon 20 Sep 2010 02:19:15 PM UTC
@ peterbosch

Yes, Badoo does look innocent at first glance but it has been confirmed that Badoo did harvest e-mails from gmail and googlemail accounts. Reproduced the relevant part of an e-mail that I received confirming the harvesting:

"the badoo site harvested my email address book. I think I have sorted it now but let me know at once if you get any more from this bloody site.". (extract of e-mail received by me from a Senior Lecturer on 19/09/2010).

My own further investigation of Badoo also revealed phishing attempts in that Badoo tried several times to get credit card details from me.

The .co.uk address does redirect to the .com address, which is a ploy increasingly used by spam sites to lend credibility to those spam sites.

Although the site is clean vis-a-vis malware, et al, the site should still be treated with caution for the spamming and phishing. The harvesting of address books for spamming purposes is a serious cause for concern.

MagicDude4Eva on Mon 20 Sep 2010 05:40:36 PM UTC
Not going to try it out
but a quick Google search shows:

At registration you are asked to enter your msn/gmail/yahoo username and password to find out if other friends are also on badoo.

Sources: Badoo at Killerstartups and on Google Forum

Quite scary if this is true and very surprising that Google does not do anything about it. (And that there are users out there who enter their userid/password on a social-networking site).

Jazspeak on Sun 26 Sep 2010 07:56:17 PM UTC
Re: Did they register?

As far as I can discover, he did not give any permission or passwords to his e-mail accounts. I am aware that he must have registered an account with Badoo in order to try an read the non-existent message from his "trusted source", and since he was using a googlemail e-mail address it looks like Badoo were able to access his address book on googlemail without his password.

Like you, I set up a fake account to see how it works. Interestingly, I was required to upload a photo of myself in order to get at the non-existent message that Badoo claimed was from my friend, so I used an altered picture of the Mona Lisa, and the picture was moderated within four hours and deemed to be unsuitable. The only password I used on Badoo was the login password issued by Badoo, and I did not see any request for any other passwords. Closing the fake account was not so easy, either. It took me a number of attempts before the profile was deleted, and I suspect that Badoo deleted the account after the picture moderation revealed that the account was faked and of no use to Badoo. However, that didn't stop Badoo sending me another e-mail claiming that my friend had left a message (same as the first e-mail that I received) but I did not bother with having anything further to do with Badoo since I already knew that the message doesn't exist, and that Badoo are unscrupulous spammers.

When I had set up the fake account on Badoo I had enough time before the moderation to discover that Badoo is not a social networking site but is an Internet dating site masquerading as a social networking site. There were several areas of concern beyond the spamming, particularly the repeated requests for me to enter my bank and credit card details. This constitutes phishing and is another reason to rate Badoo as dangerous.

Lance-Badoo on Fri 01 Oct 2010 11:42:03 AM UTC
Badoo spokesman here

Hi everybody, name is Lance and I'm authorised to speak on behalf of Badoo. I spotted this conversation and wanted to give you our side of the story. I hope this will be accepted in the spirit of open and honest discussion.

To be clear: Badoo gives users the option of inviting their friends to join the site, and if they choose to do so they must enter the login credentials of their email service. So this is an action which is only undertaken with the users' permission, and Badoo sends only one email to each of their contacts inviting them to join.

It's worth pointing out that this is a practice that is employed by all of the leading social networks to help new users locate or add their friends on the site, so we don't feel that Badoo is doing anything unusual or underhand.

I'm happy to answer questions either here or via PM.

IssViews on Fri 21 Jan 2011 01:24:24 PM UTC
RE: Badoo spokesman here
@ Lance-Badoo

To be clear: Badoo gives users the option of inviting their friends to join the site, and if they choose to do so they must enter the login credentials of their email service. So this is an action which is only undertaken with the users' permission, and Badoo sends only one email to each of their contacts inviting them to join.

BS and you have not listened to what was previously pointed out to you nor have you done anything to change this!

we don't feel that Badoo is doing anything unusual or underhand.

There is none so deaf as those that do not wish to hear! YOUR company uses pathetic excuses and tries to pass the buck implying others do this as much as you when in fact they DON'T. Give me undeniable proof that other companies, and name them, that willfully encourage and etice users to part with email login details so they they can spam those on contact lists. We can then see what they have to say and how they feel about your accusations.

YOU entice your customers to part with their email login information NOT to help them invite friends as they can do this quite easy of their own accord. IT is a marketing ploy by your scumbag service to spam, YES SPAM, those on that persons contact list.

I'm happy to answer questions either here or via PM.

No you are not because you would not answer nor accept anti-spam regulation in the UK that was pointed out to you. More BS your end to distance yourself from any wrongdoing and help evade critisism.

Using an obese PC. I offer it a bit and it takes a megabyte.


Enough said I think.... read the rest on the WOT site.

FINALLY..............



Rob Polupulous says:
August 15, 2011 at 10:56 am

I agree, it’s just another data mining organization set up to track/collect email addresses. They can then turn around and sell these addresses to 3rd parties.

(1) They request that you sign in with your hotmail, yahoo, facebook etc. account. Are you kidding me? Giving a 3rd party website my personal username and password for an unrelated account is asking for major trouble. Granted, you can sign in with your Badoo specific username/pw., yet requesting the aforementioned email/social networking personal information is where a data mining attempt kicks in.

(2) There is a feature called, ‘Who’s online now’. Yet, if you click on that link, a popup appears asking you to download ‘Badoo Desktop’ to find out where that person lives? Not only is that intrusive but highly suspect, when all I wanted was to see ‘Who’s online now’, in my city.

(3) I deleted, or supposedly deleted the account. What happens? Within 1 month of deleting the Badoo account, my thankfully anonymous email address fills up with Badoo messages. Essentially these are messages enticing me to log back into Badoo, saying that so and so would like to meet me. Utter nonsense and obviously they ignored my request to delete the account.

The site organizers must be real scum of the earth to carry out the practices mentioned above.

All I can suggest to anyone using social networking sites is:

(1) use an email address that is anonymous and bears no obvious connection to you. If you do get email spammed, at least it’s in an email address you don’t care about.

(2) be careful what private information you disclose on these sites: that includes photographs/phone numbers/physical address/birthday/etc. Although that seems common sense, I’m sure some people wave that knowledge if asked by a potential date.

(3) whatever happened to normal dating methods? Haha, well it’s harder when you get older and out of the school scene to meet new people. Yet, I found Badoo is not a valid alternative.

Our cowboy is Bryan Willhelm Lass (Aged 42)
A self-styled computer programmer and at:
IdaVista Computer Services
1955 West Wapoot Drive (thats where the '1955' in privetanna1955 comes from)
Meridian
Idaho
Tel: 208-938-1176 or 208-898-0421

Working in the computer industry – does not give a cowboy automatic rustling rights to spread links to phishing or spam-related material, or to attempt to hack into forums to steal and pillage other people's private data.