...plug in someone else's. It's in part spam-harvesting, I suspect.

Snopes has [link|http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/wordofmouth.asp|this to say], comparing it to an old "$20 for mail not to you" PO Box rental scam.

\r\nThere's no "report" or any other useful information to be found here \ufffd just a notification that some anonymous contributor recently submitted an "I HAVE INFORMATION" entry on you. If you want to find out what this anonymous contributor actually said about you, you have to communicate with him through Word-of-Mouth's ANONYMOUS EMAIL SYSTEM which \ufffd this is where the "sucker" part kicks in \ufffd is only available to Word-of-Mouth "Power Users": One-Year Subscription $19.97, Two-Year Subscription (BEST VALUE) $29.97. However, all the "Power Users" who have written to us about their experiences with Word-of-Mouth have reported that after they paid the fees to learn what was being said about them, all they learned was that the anonymous contributors had "misplaced" whatever information they supposedly had to share. \r\n

There's also a Usenet [link|http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=binir3%24mcn%241%40News.Dal.Ca&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dwordofmouthconnection%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3Dbinir3%2524mcn%25241%2540News.Dal.Ca%26rnum%3D1|thread on nanae], recommending: "They are spammers and extortionists. Firewall any IP that sends you their crap".

Netcraft has them hosted by [link|http://www.hopone.com/|HopOne], at both [link|http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=word-of-mouth.org|word-of-mouth.org] (since May, 2003) and [link|http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=wordofmouthconnection.com|wordofmouthconnection.com] (late August, 2003).

Contact page says they're at WordofMouthConnection.com, 370 Turk, Suite 1274, San Francisco CA 94102

WHOIS gives:

\r\n

\r\nRegistrant:\r\n WORD-OF-MOUTH LLP\r\n 1231 40TH ST\r\n SUITE 329\r\n EMERYVILLE, CA 94608\r\n US\r\n\r\n Domain name: WORD-OF-MOUTH-CONNECTION.COM\r\n\r\n Administrative Contact:\r\n    KESTLER, PETER  WORD-OF-MOUTH.ORG@ATTGLOBAL.NET\r\n    SIVERANO MIRABUENO\r\n    STO NINO VILLLAGE\r\n    UPPER PEIDAD, TORIL\r\n    DAVAO CITY, DAVAO DEL NORTE 8000\r\n    PH\r\n    +1.639185653118\r\n Technical Contact:\r\n    KESTLER, PETER  WORD-OF-MOUTH.ORG@ATTGLOBAL.NET\r\n    SIVERANO MIRABUENO\r\n    STO NINO VILLLAGE\r\n    UPPER PEIDAD, TORIL\r\n    DAVAO CITY, DAVAO DEL NORTE 8000\r\n    PH\r\n    +1.639185653118\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Registration Service Provider:\r\n    Consumer.net - TheNIC.com, domains@consumer.net\r\n    http://TheNIC.com\r\n    Discount consumer gateway to Tucows OpenSRS - Domain renewals, Tucows\r\n    e-mail, SSL Certificates.\r\n\r\n\r\n Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.\r\n Record last updated on 25-Aug-2003.\r\n Record expires on 25-Aug-2004.\r\n Record Created on 25-Aug-2003.\r\n\r\n Domain servers in listed order:\r\n    NS1.WORDOFMOUTHREPORTS.COM   66.36.240.135\r\n    NS2.WORDOFMOUTHREPORTS.COM   66.36.246.127\r\n

\r\n

...why the fuck would I want my peronal information/communications to be managed by some anonymous fly-by-night?

I barely tolerate my ISP. Hotmail/Yahoo mail are still an "in the event of an emergency only" proposition. All this stuff like Friendster, online dating, etc., just wigs me out. There are 21 sites that have permissions to set cookies in my browser, and several of those are related hosts within a domain. Sorry, I know what you can do with a database of 50k - 100m users, with linkable characteristics. You ain't gettin' mine.