AFF Settles FTC Changes Re: Pop-Ups

According to the FTC, AdultFriendFinder.com, which touts itself as “The World’s Largest Sex & Swingers Personal Community,” and its affiliates use pop-up ads to drive traffic to its Web sites. Some of the ads have included graphic depictions of sexual behavior, exposing consumers, including children, to sexually explicit images. Such ads were displayed to consumers who were searching online using terms such as “flowers,” “travel,” and “vacations.” In some cases, defendant’s sexually explicit ads were distributed using spyware and adware.

Until sometime this year, I was an employee of the Friend Finder Network. I unfortunately had to work there because I was unable to find alternate employment for comparable compensation in my area. I found their business practices to be illegal and immoral and I am so happy to have disassociated myself with them. Here is the inside information into how the ?network" works:

1. Andrew Conru established the Friend Finder Network based on spam, lies, and deceptive business practices in 1996 on cheap computers and even cheaper programs.
2. Andrew Conru was the first person to be charged under California State anti-spam laws. He privately considers this some sort of badge of honor.

3. Andrew Conru refuses to remove profiles and photos of individuals regardless of how old or stale they become. Some profiles on his website represent individuals who have died several years ago. Profiles on his websites can be as old as eight (8) years old!

4. Andrew Conru uses employees to send out illegal and deceptive unsolicited commercial email (SPAM) to lure unsuspected consumers to his websites.

5. Andrew Conru deliberately makes his websites to seem like they have many more profiles than they actually do. The number of profiles listed in his profile pages do not accurately represent what is found in his database.
6. Andrew Conru uses computer code and employees to make his sites appear to be much more active and interesting than they really are. For example, you'll find his chat rooms will ?play" old archives of chat conversations that are not actually occurring in real time. You'll also find yourself receiving email from profiles that are not real people. The use of Bots is a core principal that drives his business.

7. After being charged and investigated several times for Spam violations, Andrew Conru now engages the services of an off-shore (Taiwan) organization to send out massive amounts of illegal and deceptive unsolicited commercial email (SPAM). Andrew Conru believes that this exempts him from being in violation o US Law, and has made that point very clear to many of his employees. In actuality, this activity does not exempt him from violation and he is still breaking the law.

8. Andrew Conru deliberately and knowingly does not scrub his list of people who ask to be removed from future mailings (almost non of his emails even have a way to do so) or known minors. According to Andrew Conru, children have access to their parents credit cards too.

9. Andrew Conru owns hundreds if not thousands of domain names that are deceptively registered for the sole purpose of spamming the search engines and providing locations to target his illegal and deceptive spam so that he can deny ownership of and blame others for.
10. Andrew Conru has caused many of his partners and affiliates to undergo painstaking and sometimes devastating investigations of spam violations by various courts, ISP's, and government authorities only to divert attention away from his illegal spam operation.

11. Andrew Conru uses a complex web of various online billing processors, offshore merchant banks, and third party payment processors to enable him to illegally make unauthorized charges against previous customer's credit cards. Andrew Conru knowingly relies on the fact that a very small percentage of these consumers will ever recognize his ambiguous payment monikers that show up on their credit card statements. Andrew Conru makes these charges relatively low (between $20 to $25) to ensure that the charges remain ?under their radar".

12. Andrew Conru has been denied the ability to process credit cards from several merchant banks in the past due to violations of regulations or excessively high consumer charge back rates forcing him to use third party processors and offshore banks.

13. Andrew Conru once had an excellent Network Operation Center (NOC) team working for his company until they were all forced to resign due to the fact that they were unable to tolerate being part of such a deceptive, misleading, immoral, corrupt company. When Andrew Conru was faced with their suggestions to change his deceptive business practices, they were all forced to resign through being reassigned to meaningless positions with associated cuts in compensation.

14. Andrew Conru takes deliberate and vengeful actions against former employees that are vocal about his business operations and makes them sign unacceptable confidentiality agreements.

I applaud the RipOffReport and all of the people who have posted honest concerns about this appalling, unpardonable, and awful criminal organization. My only hope is that one day Andrew Conru is thoroughly investigated and forced to pay for his crimes against society.

I should note that all of these points are based only upon information and belief and not based on fact. These point can easily be proven if a simple investigation was done through definitively answering the following questions:

1. Does Andrew Conru employ a foreign organization and if so, what are they tasked to do?

2. How many merchant accounts, payment processors, and billing providers are used by the entire Friend Finder Network? What are their charge back rates, complaint rates, and billing monikers? How many have they used in the past and why were they terminated? How many of them are offshore?

3. How many domain names have been paid for directly by Andrew Conru or the Friend Finder Network? How many of them have been blacklisted? How many of them are properly registered with the appropriate and accurate registration information?

4. How old are the profiles on his sites? Do any programs exist to deceptive make his websites seem more interesting and active than they actually are? Are the amount of profiles he claims to have in each state accurate?

11. Andrew Conru uses a complex web of various online billing processors, offshore merchant banks, and third party payment processors to enable him to illegally make unauthorized charges against previous customer's credit cards. Andrew Conru knowingly relies on the fact that a very small percentage of these consumers will ever recognize his ambiguous payment monikers that show up on their credit card statements. Andrew Conru makes these charges relatively low (between $20 to $25) to ensure that the charges remain ?under their radar".