Thomas writes:
I went to this online personals website, which I had never used before. I was interested in corresponding with women of similar ethnic backgrounds to my own, so I clicked on Russia and read the listings of russian women who had posted information and sometimes photos.
I sent perhaps two dozen letters expressing an interest in corresponding. One woman did write back saying that I would have to go to another website and pay some money in order to get her address and saying that that was the only way I could possibly communicate with her and that sending another email would be useless because it wouldn't get to her.
I then received an email from Alice, the Director of some russian marriage agency. It seems from Alice's email that she had read my email, because she addressed me by my first name, which was not contained in my email address, since I had sent it from an alternative email address.
Alice told me that I was permitted to select only one woman from their website to correspond with. I am very troubled by both the invasion of privacy for the goal of income maximization and the hidden costs that were not known to me and the extent of which are still not known to me before I invested my time in using what is ostensibly a free CompuServe service.
I may be writing to the wrong location with my complaint, but I think what these dating serives are doing is wrong. Wrong isn't the word for it. Trading in human flesh is beyond unethical. It's barbarous. Offhand, we don't know of any remedies, unfortunately.
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