Husband has emails from Match.com

[CluelesslyCurious]

Hi all, have name changed for this one as quite frankly it’s embarrassing! For the sake of this thread I will refer to husband as “DH” although he’s far from that.

Was getting the DC ready for school yesterday when DD handed me DH’s phone. I was reaching to put it on the bedside table and happened to glance down at the screen and see that he had an email from Match.com. Just for context I’ve never looked through his phone or felt the need to. Immediately my heart began to race for reasons that are obvious!

I waited until he had come back from dropping the kids off and confronted him about it. He acted confused and said “I don’t know why would I be on match.com? It’s a spam email.” I told him to pass me his phone so I could see if it was just spam as I feel I was entitled to look to see if what he was saying was true. I typed in “Match.com” in the search bar of his emails so I could scroll through.

There were lots of emails, most of them unopened but they all mentioned him by NAME! For example, Hi , you have two profile views. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I clicked on the link and it did in fact take me to the match.com login page. I told him to login and he claimed there’s nothing for him to login to. I continued to scroll through the emails in an attempt to find a potential email that would show if he had signed up but couldn’t find anything.

May I add whilst I was doing this he was berating me calling me “insecure” and “crazy” although I hadn’t gone fishing for anything nor suspected him of such a thing up until I happened to see the email. I feel I had the right to look as his wife because if I had emails from a dating website I am pretty sure he would have something to say. I felt like I was being gaslighted. As I had somewhere to be I left it at that and as for now he thinks I believe his version of events but I have a horrible feeling in my gut that there is so much more to uncover.

Wise users of Mumsnet please give me some advice! Am I crazy?

From the other side of the coin here.

Yes its a scam, how do I know because I get them and so does my husband. Yes it knows your name as it's on your email profile. I have certainly never signed up wnd pretty sure he wouldn't have signed up under his business name.

My emails specifically say my name and my husbands emails says his company name. Cause is due to information being sold by other places to third parties and some is pop ups if you've ever clicked on them. If I could work out how to upload pics I could show you the ones I get and my husband.

I can promise you they are spam!!!!!!!!!!

There is a way it can happen @CluelesslyCurious - it happened to me - I started getting emails from Match.com (the AMERICAN site not UK) with matches for me in a Southern US state. It was a pain to sort out.

Does he have a gmail account? What happens to me, and it has happened before, is that someone can sign up for an account using an email address like [email protected] and when the emails start coming to the account they get sent to [email protected]

gmail treats joansmith@ and joan.smith@ as the same email address - it ignores the dot. Not all online systems do. I never worked out why Match.com would not check the email address before opening the account.

It was a pain to get taken off their system as when you click on any of the links in the email it took me to the UK site and UK help - who just tell you they are not the same company as the American Match - but there is no way to connect to the american site from a UK IP address. I had to log on using a VPN in order to get to the US help desk via the "contact us" field and they sorted it out for me.

So, before you LTB check the email address is EXACTLY the same as his.

Match sent me emails for years after I had left the site (and I’d only signed up for a free trial). Of course if you’ve been with your husband longer than the site has existed, you still have cause for concern…

POF is really old school

I get all sorts of emails that cite my name. HOWEVER, not a single one of them has ever suggested that I have profile views, unless I do, indeed, have a profile.

I am thinking that you two have been together for some time, as there are DC who are school age. EITHER he previously had an account, and simply abandoned it rather than deleting it (and that's fairly common), or there's something fishy going on.

And yes, he is gaslighting you, whichever is true.

I've had emails from these places but never been signed up to them it could be entirely innocent.

It might be too late, but go to the website, log in with his email and click forgot password. It will send the password to his email, so you can reset the password from his email and then log in and check the profile. He's definitely done something if he's getting emails by name, but bear in mind this may have been years ago before you had met (giving him the benefit of the doubt)

Could you check his bank statements and see if he’s paid them a fee?

I felt like I was being gaslighted

Not even close. At most he’s lying to you. But please don’t trivialize gaslighting like this. It’s an extreme form of mental torture, not a lying husband flirting with others online (if he’s even doing that).

Doesn’t match.com cost money to join? Check the bank and credit card statements.

Spam certainly can have your name on. I seem to think my old email used to get lots of emails like you describe from Match.com; though it was a long while ago, so I may be mistaken. A huge amount of spam is certainly dating stuff and 'you have a message' on a site you've never been to.

For the sake of this thread I will refer to husband as “DH” although he’s far from that.

This is the real problem in your OP. If DW got emails like this I wouldn't give it a moment's thought because I trust her. Similarly I'd be upset if she demanded to go through my emails just because I got spam.

You don't sound as if you like or trust your husband, OP. Whether he's done something wrong in this case or not (and I'm sceptical given how readily he handed his phone over), you need to ask yourself why you think he's cheating.

Given he opened some of the emails prior to OP noting the alert and then seeing them on his phone, he was aware he was somehow signed up to Match. And yet:

He acted confused and said “I don’t know why would I be on match.com? It’s a spam email.”

Check the bank. I have match success- he’s asleep whilst I feed 8 week old! It was rammed with married men and inactive profiles. That was nearly 6 years ago! I thought it was basically now Facebook based

I've never had spam from match.com and I imagine the only time you could get it us if you've been on the website at some time.

I can't imagine any spam that would address the person by name and say how many profile views he's had.

Unfortunately it's likely he has or will create a new email address now to hide his activities.

Do you have separate bank accounts,van you check his credit card? Dating sites usually charge.

I get spam mails from match but I have used in the past previously.

But yesterday my profile was seen showing 'active in the last 24 hours' when I haven't been on it in about 2 years! That caused its own issues :(

They have unethical ways!

There’s a bunch of people on this thread who sound like they’d fall for the Microsoft tech support scam as long as the caller used their real name.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_support_scam

Was it in his junk folder? If his data has been sold or stolen, he’ll get all sorts of stuff. Our junk is full of “hi xxx, Sarah is waiting for you in xxx” it’s virus links or crappy segs sites. they use the name on the email address.

if they’re legit emails from match.com then I’d suggest he’s signed up.

obviously you’ll be alert to other sus behaviour now. If you have access to his email to do the "forgotten password" you'll be able to try logging in.

Agreed. I get them too. Really not impressed with the "matches " I have been sent. DH and I laugh about it

Me too I'm constantly getting emails from dating sites with matches both male & female & I'm not on any sites as I've no interest in dating, it's spam just like the winning millions from some lottery in Africa or someone I've never heard of leaving me an inheritance 🤷🏻‍♀️

Scroll to the bottom of the email and look at the company address. If it’s a US address it might be that someone with a similar name in the US used his email address by accident when setting up their account. It happened to my sister last year. She got absolutely spammed and thought her email address had been hacked.

Lots of people have said they get match.com spam (including me) with their names there so please don't jump to conclusions.

Anyway this post reminded me that when I was 15 I got a spam CALL from match.com and I was with my dad! I put it on loudspeaker, just assumed it would be someone who's number I didn't save. He was so confused and so was I! 😭

But if it was spam, why didn't he unsubscribe ages ago? OP said the messages go back ages.

Because some people are lazy about their inbox. Have you never met those people with 8374 notifications? It would drive me mad, as I delete and unsubscribe from things all the time but it doesn't bother everyone and they just leave them there.

This is me. With 127 tabs open on chrome. 🤣😭

I have tons of zombie spam that I have unsubscribed from repeatedly but they keep popping back up.

But that is confirmation bias surely. Everyone guilty ended up angry. Well innocent people can get angry at false accusations. Sitting there “confused” “bewildered” after the Penny had dropped and you realised your partner is accusing you of having an affair isn’t a script to prove innocence.