Hey there. This is our FAQ. We spent a lot of time on it.
If you have a question not already answered here, you can email us. However, please understand that since lesbotronic is 100% free, we don’t get paid to answer anyone’s email.
We do answer a lot of emails because we’re generally nice and happy to be helpful.
But due to our high email volume and our large membership, we find it entirely appropriate to limit the amount of time we’re willing to devote to anyone who doesn’t think she should take her own time to see if we’ve ALREADY answered her question.
Reasonable and reasonably intelligent adults will realize this attitude is not only sensible, but completely necessary to preserve our sanity and our willingness to keep running lesbotronic for free for the reasonable and reasonably intelligent adults.
Explain 100% private
We will never put your profile out for public viewing. We will also never sell or share your information with any other company or website.
Since profiles are not published anywhere public, this also means they will not be indexed by search engines.
Unlike many social sites, none of our member profiles originated elsewhere, nor will they be sent or displayed elsewhere.
None of our members were imported from any other site; none of our members will subsequently be posted on any other site.
Nothing whatsoever regarding any member will be syndicated, sold, or disseminated elsewhere.
Anyone allowed to view your profile will have also completed their own and NOT been rejected by our human lesbian screeners
We will also never sell or share your information with any other company or website.
Our personals are as private as possible, yet still function via the internet.
If you want to meet new people even more privately than our personals, you’ll have to go off the internet only.
Explain 100% free, 100% of the time
Short Answer: Yes, it’s all free. That’s free as in free all the time, free for all the features, unpaid members (we have no paid members) get everything on here. 100% free, now, later, for everyone all of the time, all subscription options free. No jokes, no bait-and switches, no fraudulently tricky this that or the other thing, just . . . free.
And that’s the way it’s going to stay. No, we’re not gearing up to charge later. We’ll still be free for all the later that will ever exist during which lesbotronic continues to exist as well.
Longer Answer: Even though this is stated as clear as day right here at the tiptop of the FAQ and also on our index page, sometimes we still get email asking if we are REALLY SURE and do we REALLY PROMISE that the site is REALLY AND TRULY free? And could we just go ahead and confirm that again JUST FOR THEM one or two or several more times?
AHEM. OK, let’s put this yet another way, for anyone who still remains the slightest bit skeptical:
We personally challenge you to find anyplace on lesbotronic where there are instructions on how any member can pay lesbotronic any fee whatsoever to upgrade or improve anything else regarding her member experience on lesbotronic in any way, shape, or form via any payment mechanism. That would mean a credit card page, a postal address to send money, a 1-800 number to call something in, a NON 1-800 number to do similar, a paypal link . . . anything at all.
If you can find specific instructions anywhere on lesbotronic on how any member can pay us any money, we’ll give YOU some money. How’s that?
(Important Hint: No one will ever succeed. Really.)
Why is lesbotronic free? How can it be free?
Short Answer: It’s both a personal interest (heh), and something we thought we could do for our “community” . . . or at least that chunk of it inclined to sign up for our site and play well with others on it.
Longer Answer: We’ve met quite a few lesbians via the internet ourselves . . . made new friends . . . fell in love . . . and various other gratifying states-of-mind. The opportunity to meet other lesbians on the internet we probably wouldn’t have met otherwise dramatically and positively changed our lives. We thought we could help spread that happiness around.
We also thought that most profile sites out there for non-heterosexuals (other than gay men) were lacking in important ways, usually because they were designed by heterosexuals for heterosexuals . . . with lesbians only allowed in at the end as an afterthought, if even that. We thought that as lesbians, we could do better for other lesbians.
Finally, we thought that as lesbians, we would prefer to make our important social connections on sites run by other lesbians. lesbotronic is 100% lesbian owned and operated, and a lot of our members appreciate that.
As for HOW lesbotronic can be free, we now accept advertising in some places on the site. That pays to keep us open. For a LONG time we paid for everything out of our own pockets and the site remained completely ad-free. However, as it got more popular and expenses mounted, some form of revenue generation became practically necessary. (We’re not independently wealthy and we couldn’t keep running it if we allowed it to completely bankrupt us.)
Is lesbotronic secure?
This entire site is served under SSL encryption, with an Industry Standard SSL Certificate. This prevents hijacking of any and all of your personal information while it is in transit from you to us.
If your browser displays the “http” sections of URLs, the https (as opposed to just http) at the beginning of each shows you your connection is secure. Also depending on your browser, there may be a “lock” icon next to that URL and/or in that browser tab.
Can I post a photo within my lesbotronic profile?
Headshots and validating selfies are required now, yes.
How do I just browse the profiles without submitting one myself?
You don’t.
We do not now and will never offer that option. And, we’re proud of that.
We never publish anyone’s profile or any details from anyone’s profile out on the “open internet,” you have to be a member.
For more on this see above, “explain 100% private.”
“I have tried MANY other websites and have been disappointed . . .
. . . in the past and that’s why now I am trying this one to see if it really is just THAT hard to find someone on the internet. So right now I need to know now if lesbotronic will FINALLY be the one to REALLY make a difference for ME?”
Short Answer: Probably not. Not unless you change your approach.
Longer Answer: If you tried MANY other websites and were CONSISTENTLY disappointed, it’s likely you need to reevaluate something about your behavior above and beyond and/or instead of merely switching websites.
If many different trials across different websites have yielded the same or similar results for you, the glitch here is probably something going on with what’s between your keyboard and your chair.
(Sorry, but hey, reality check. Don’t get offended; it’s here in the FAQ for everyone to read.)
Maybe there are other personals websites out there that suggest you can instantly, immediately, and almost magically find your one-and-only soulmate and then somehow confirm that she is exactly that within like, a week or two, if ONLY you’d sign up for them.
And then probably pay them some money.
Or maybe those other websites will somehow suggest to you that whether or not they will work for you is 100% up to the website, and 0% dependent on your own behavior.
And maybe that’s the language or the expectation you had approaching this website.
Our experience as a group of fairly experienced lesbians is that life doesn’t USUALLY work like that. More often than not, you’ll need to stick around a bit and put in some effort meeting other women with whom you have important things in common before that “lightning” will strike. Not always, but usually. And we have no magical way around that to offer you.
Well, we will say for sure that this site is free. That’s certainly different.
But other than the not having to pay part, most of the results you get are up to you.
Yes, we have thousands of cool members, but you still have to put in some effort on your part to meet them. I mean, it’s not like we’re going to overnight post someone to your doorstep in a big straw basket with a “Soulmate Guaranteed” sticker on her forehead.
Sooooooo . . . if you were looking for a high-powered sales pitch or a hard sell approach, you came to the wrong place, babycakes.
What is whitelisting? Why do you recommend that before signing up?
Short Answer: A “whitelist” is a list of email addresses or domain names that you tell your provider to let through their filters. “Whitelisting” is the activity of doing that for yourself. We recommend that to make sure your email provider doesn’t “lose” the email we send you.
Longer Answer: “Whitelisting” is a just a catch-all generic term for adding an email address to whatever your particular email provider calls their list for YOU whereby you’re telling THEM to make sure to let email from someone ELSE’s email address through.
This as opposed to possibly spam-trapping it or otherwise throwing it away without your permission before you can read it.
This list is something you have with the company that provides your email, not just something on your local machine (for instance, NOT just in the email program on your computer, like Outlook Express). It’s also something you take care of on YOUR end. You don’t email us and ask us to do it for you, we’re not able to do that, you have to do it from within your own email account signed in with your password.
We’ve also been asked this question about whitelisting quite a few times:
“If I got some email from you, that means I’m cleared now to get all additional email you’ll ever send even if I don’t bother with this whitelisting thing, right?”
While your mileage may vary according to email provider, in general, NO, NOT TRUE AT ALL. It’s often the case that if you fail to do the whitelisting, your email provider will let some but not all email from a particular sender through.
If you don’t already know, we’d recommend finding out anyway, because knowing how to use your email account properly can’t help but be a good thing for you for a wide variety of reasons, not just using this website.
Instructions are readily available for most email accounts directly from your email provider and/or their tech support.
If I couldn’t manage to receive email and my confirmation email bounced, can I just go ahead and be active anyway?
Short Answer: Afraid not.
Longer Answer: Please refer to the preceding question in this FAQ for additional details on why a confirmation email might go missing.
Meanwhile, you have to sign up using a valid and available email account, typed correctly, and again, whitelisting in advance is best.
If I register and my profile was rejected, will you email me and say so?
Nope.
I seem to be missing email from lesbotronic.
Short Answer: Please tell your email provider to accept all email from us.
Longer Answer: Most everyone seems to know they will miss email if they allow their email inbox to overfill and run out of space and/or they don’t log into their email account for a really long time. So, that’s one possibility.
But mostly we get this question for another reason, that being that many members seem to think that if they get one email from us, as long as space permits in their email account, they will then necessarily get ALL future email from us.
Not true.
Many if not most email providers have an annoying habit of letting some but not all email through, particularly when the email in question is from a sender that sends a lot of email, like lesbotronic.com.
THIS IS WHY WE RECOMMEND THE WHITELISTING.
According to the vast majority of email providers, this is the prescribed way to ensure you don’t miss email from a sender from whom you wouldn’t want to miss email.
(“What is whitelisting?” is another ? in this same FAQ.)
What if I want to change email addresses with you?
For various technical and security reasons we’ve elected to take care of this manually, for now.
First, we’d recommend not switching email addresses with us more than necessary because those that do that tend to get confused.
Second, we’d ask you not to switch email addresses with us more than necessary because it’s going to be a slight pain in our bum each time you do it.
But we do understand sometimes this is necessary. So please email us FROM THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS you were last using with us.
Send it to: robin@lesbotronic.com
In that email you also need to say what you’d like your new email address with us to be.
When we get to it (meaning, this will not be instantaneous, it’s not automated, an actual human will be making this change manually) we’ll send an email to both the old and new email addresses, confirming that for you and making sure the new email address is valid.
You absolutely need to whitelist our email address with your new one as well.
I messaged another member and she didn’t message me back! Why?
We’ve received this question no less than 5000 times. No, we’re really NOT exaggerating. However, most of the women asking something similar usually meant one of three very different things:
ONE: “Would you happen to know why a particular member I contacted did not contact me back? Like, has she somehow indicated her lack of interest in me . . . to the women who run lesbotronic? Or do you somehow know the answer to this question in some other omniscient way?”
The answers to those 3 questions are respectively: Extremely unlikely, extremely unlikely, and absolutely not.
TWO: “Maybe the member I messaged that did not respond to me is not still active, and that’s why she didn’t respond?”
It’s certainly not possible for us to know what’s going on day by day in the personal lives of all members of our large website.
HOWEVER, if a member’s profile is still active on our site, they are too, to the very best of our knowledge.
THREE: “Do you have some general suggestions for me that would improve my OVERALL response rate? I know you likely know nothing about any one particular member’s lack of interest, but can you give me some advice to help boost GENERAL interest regarding my profile and other members’ desire to get to know ME?”
Since we started messages, we’ve seen an 85% response rate. Meaning, in a completely average, statistically compiled across all members way, about 85% of all messages sent from one member to another get a reply.
That’s actually a fantastic and well above average response rate for a personals and/or social networking site.
. . .
But that is an average. (That means some members are doing even better than 85%, some worse.)
If the messages you’re sending are motivating an 85% response rate or better? You might not need our advice.
If not?
Please first consider your profile. Read and consider our recommendations in the advice area (link up top), especially “general recommendations,” “constructing your profile,” “cliches you should probably avoid,” “HEADSHOTS (post one!),” “be open to the ‘just friends’ option,” and “messaging/netiquette.”
Then reconsider it all again, and really . . . try to be a bit honest with yourself. Give it a hard look.
Allow yourself to be self-critical.
One reason we’re putting all this advice here is so everyone can access 24/7, but another reason is so we can refer folks to it, without them taking it too personally and biting our heads completely off.
If you message a lot of folks and no one responds, you may need to give your approach a bit of a look.
Please do note: This is NOT us saying there’s something wrong with YOU.
BUT THERE MAY BE something that could benefit from improvement regarding your approach toward others. . . .
So you’re saying you already did all that? Totally? Completely? No doubt whatsoever? Your profile and the messages you send are as recommended and reflect you well?
Then, sorry to say, maybe you just hit a bad patch of luck regarding the immediate availability of the members you selected, at least during those days you sent those messages. Unfortunately, that’s obviously possible.
So branch out! Contact some other members! Different members, possibly those with whom you may have more in common.
No more members, you say? NOPE, not true!
There will always be more members for you to contact. You can expand your search options, and/or your geographic options, and/or you can post in the community forum.
And that’s just what you can do TODAY. Since new members sign up constantly, you can always stay tuned and contact newbies as they arrive as well (which is obviously a good idea ANYWAY).
Keep the preceding advice in mind, expand your options, and the overall social possibilities are virtually unlimited!
Should I share offsite contact info in my messages to other members? When?
Many members exchange several or more messages ON this site via which they establish a rapport and some stuff in common, then transition to phone and/or text and/or similar, then meet in person in a public place, then . . . whatever they like next!
And that would be the recommended progression, keeping everyone comfy.
Meaning, we know most members don’t merely want to exchange messages on this site. They want their new relationships to move elsewhere as well. And that’s awesome!
However, you will make some members uncomfortable if you tell them to text/phone/whatever-else you offsite within the first message or two, especially if you have little else to say. It’s best to get to know someone a bit ON the site first.
If there’s mutual interest, you’ll still get there! Just cool your jets and give it a few minutes.
You might imagine you’re just sharing YOUR offsite contact info and gee, how could anybody ever have a problem with that?
But in reality, in order for her to respond offsite, her contact info would be attached to her text or call, forcing her to share HERS as well. She might enjoy the extra layer of privacy exchanging messages on this site provides, at least initially. She may want to keep her offsite contact info private until mutual interest has been established.
So if you send her a message insisting she immediately continue your conversation offsite, but she’s the sort that likes to get to know folks a little bit before sharing her own contact info, her choices would then be:
Explain that you’ve made her uncomfortable
OR
Ignore your message entirely!
Awkward!
Are my private messages available to anyone else?
Unless someone reports a problem we feel we must address (SEE NEXT QUESTION), the only persons granted access to a private message are its sender and recipient.
Absolutely no one else, provided you keep your password private.
When will the women who run lesbotronic read my private messages?
Short Answer: We won’t at all, unless you force us to do so.
Longer Answer: While we do monitor replies in the community forum (since those are actually intended to be less private and more generally social), we do not plan to read private messages.
First, we don’t have the time to read everyone’s messages. Second, we don’t want to invade your privacy . . . again, unless you force us to do so.
How would you force us to do so?
First, if it is reported by another member that a message you sent them violated the terms of inclusion described in this same FAQ under the question below “When would you delete someone’s profile after acceptance?”
(In the answer to that question, all items apply except, “Inclusion of any OFF internet contact info in a profile, like a telephone number or very specific geographic address.” Again, as per our extensive advice section, we do NOT recommend providing someone with off-internet contact info until you feel you know them a bit better. And you’re still not allowed to provide off-internet contact info IN your profile, since that’s just never going to be clever, again, as per all the advice in the advice section. But if you want to send someone a private message with off-internet contact info, that’s obviously not a violation.)
Second, if it’s reported that you are using messages to be a seriously unrepentant asshat. Yeah, you read that correctly.
If that happens, we’ll investigate. And that will involve reading messages you sent.
But we really, sincerely, from the bottom of our hopeful little hearts hope none of our lovely members will put this into play either. (However, it must be said in advance, so if it does come into play, we’ll have warned you in advance.)
We refuse to be that sort of service. If any member seems determined to disregard that, we’ll have to delete them.
Basically, if you don’t like someone’s profile? DON’T MESSAGE HER.
If you think there is a serious problem with someone’s profile that we apparently didn’t notice (again, probably something covered in the FAQ), tell us at lesbotronic.
If you think there is a serious problem with a message someone sent you, tell us at lesbotronic.
Messages are strictly intended to be a pleasant and socially constructive thing. We intend them to be exchanged between people who are actually POSITIVELY interested in each other.
Other services might not care about this stuff, but we do.
(No, this next thing definitely has not happened frequently, but it has an unfortunate few times.)
You’re not allowed via private messages here to be some sort of Self-Appointed Lesbotronic Vigilante who runs around in the profiles, pointing at other people and shouting what you think is wrong with them.
Nope, not allowed.
If that’s how you want to behave, I’m sure there are many internet sites that allow that, perhaps even endorse it to get attention. This site refuses to be one of those. We’re taking the high road, and if you don’t want to drive along with us on that high road, we’ll have to kick you off our bus.
If you want to more generally discuss something that vexes you, “I don’t like it when some lesbians . . . it’s not nice when some lesbians say . . . why must some lesbians do this thing or be this thing that is socially unfortunate . . . etc.” the community forum is the place for that. General discussion topics including social situations that vex you are acceptable there.
Again, if you don’t like someone’s profile? DON’T MESSAGE HER.
What if I have a problem with another member?
Short Answer: The bar for misbehavior that would cause us to delete a member that didn’t want to be deleted is high.
If the “problem” you are having with her isn’t truly serious, please consider carefully whether or not it truly merits your time and ours in reporting it.
Longer Answer: We’ve received a few “misrepresentation reports” over the years. HOWEVER, please note the bar for misbehavior that would cause us to delete someone is high.
We’re not inclined to censor or delete anyone in the vast majority of instances that are even slightly questionable.
Merely thinking another member is a bit of an ass and/or possibly prone to disseminating a few minor untruths about themselves won’t cut the mustard here.
Please also try to understand our position that it is neither practical nor possible for us to constantly police everyone that might sign up for our site. We do need to confine our concern exclusively to those situations where things are much LESS questionable.
For example, over the course of one month we received dozens of emails from a member who was “evaluating” other members in terms of how much education they reported they’d received on their profile vs. her own estimation of their probable educational level and general literacy. And when she imagined she’d found a discrepancy, she wrote in to “keep us updated on who was confused about education” so that we could “immediately take the most appropriate action.”
She would say one member reported completion of an advanced degree, yet sent her a message that sounded as if she could not possibly have graduated from high school.
She would report that another’s multiple choice answers regarding her educational level didn’t mesh with other details shared in her freetext areas.
Yet another woman needed to be “reported” because she admitted not noticing the difference between “graduated from high school” and “attended graduate school” when filling out her multiple choice questions. She’d clicked “graduate school” instead of “graduated from high school,” but reportedly didn’t rush to correct that on her profile when our “reporter” informed her of her error.
Um . . . no.
Our “most appropriate action” was . . . to do nothing at all.
As we told her multiple times, this is not the sort of thing that would clear our bar for delete-worthy misbehavior.
Did it meet a strictly personal standard of inappropriateness and undesirableness for the woman that was repeatedly writing us? Apparently it absolutely did, and that’s absolutely fine. She gets to make her own decisions regarding who is appropriate for HER to meet in HER own life.
And anyone else reading this? If such a member doesn’t meet your standards in terms of who YOU’D like to meet, that’s appropriate too. Your standards, your choices.
It just doesn’t meet our standards in terms of how badly a member would need to behave in order to get deleted.
Meanwhile, while we will never be the height/weight/age/educational level police, if something truly disturbing happened, then yes, we want to know about it.
Generally, if it’s a question of you merely not liking the member or thinking most others members might not like her either, that standard has probably not been met. We’d advise you in that situation to merely avoid messaging and/or avoid reciprocating any messages with the person that offended you and/or anyone else that doesn’t strike your fancy for any NON-serious reason.
And then even MORE generally, we’d encourage you to seek out individuals you like, interact with those, and leave behind the rest. We mean that on the site specifically as well as in life in general.
Another member messaged me and I think there’s a problem . . .
. . . I just imagine (but don’t actually know for sure) that this is a heterosexual male posing as someone else, they sent me a message I think was rude or too explicit, etc., and/or I told them I wasn’t interested and they’re still messaging me. I’m beginning to feel harassed!
While it has NOT been our experience that idiotic heterosexual men intending to harass women online are often attracted to our service, it has happened a few times.
When it became clear that it had, we deleted the profile in question and encouraged the man involved to realize he wasn’t likely to get anywhere that would be pleasurable for him with our members, with the complaints we’d already received serving amply as evidence of that notion.
Really, since there are so incredibly many internet services that are for heterosexual men looking for women that might be interested in them, signing up for one of the few that clearly isn’t is pretty ridiculous if not downright idiotic behavior.
HOWEVER, what has happened several times more often than the scenario above is that a seemingly random person from the internet at large emailed us complaining about some sort of “harassment” they felt should severely concern those of us in charge of lesbotronic . . . but then when we attempted to determine who might be the harasser, what might be the appropriate action to take, etc., they bizarrely seemed to want to continue emailing back and forth on and on into the future while simultaneously AVOIDING the provision of any actually relevant and identifying information.
This pronounced avoidance of providing any relevant info continued despite repeated and very specific requests on our part.
We ultimately ended up concluding some of these “reports” were fabricated and the “harassees” were actually motivated to get someone from lesbotronic to pay attention to them, and falsely reporting “harassment” was the inappropriate method they chose to get that attention.
Ultimately, WE have been the ones harassed more than anyone else!
So again, in case it wasn’t already apparent, we sincerely don’t mean to be rude if you were somehow harassed, but we’d ask that you respect our time and our situation as well.
Accordingly, if you have received messages from another member that you feel have been severely and/or repeatedly inappropriate, you should still report it to us, but please keep all of the following in mind.
We’re not interested in anonymous reports of unverifiable or otherwise vague harassment allegedly perpetrated by anonymous other people.
We need:
ONE: the email address you were last using with lesbotronic (you can message us on the community forum, or email us from that same email address)
TWO: specific details that would identify the profile of the person bothering you, including their member “name”
THREE: a very clear idea about why messages they sent you were troubling and unsolicited by yourself
If you’re not willing to immediately provide us with all that information, we will not be able to take you seriously or continue responding.
The ultimate decision about how to use our service, with whom to meet, where/how to meet them, and how much personal information to divulge and when during that process is UP TO YOU.
Favoring profiles that contained more and more sincere-sounding information in the freetext areas, exchanging internet messages only for a period of time before meeting and judging the amount of information and its sincerity in those messages, a phone conversation before meeting, and meeting in a public place for the first time and/or bringing a friend are all excellent ideas.
Using your common sense and respecting your intuition are excellent ideas as well.
If you begin to suspect there is something flaky or dishonest about someone, you’re probably right. Respect that, and move on.
The best response to someone harassing you via some sort of internet message is not to fire back several angry responses of your own, but to stop responding entirely.
People with time to spend harassing other people want you to validate them by returning their attentions, even if you do so negatively.
Resist the urge to respond and they’ll get bored and move on, probably a lot more quickly than you might imagine.
If you convince us another member to lesbotronic is harassing you we WILL delete their profile and possibly report them to their internet service providers. You will have done a service for the lesbotronic.com community for which we will be grateful.
However, any other action is up to you
We are not law enforcement. If you think some sort of law enforcement might be necessary in your case then that’s who you’ll need to contact.
What does “lesbotronic” mean? Did you make it up? Is it like “The Bionic Woman?
“Bionic” wasn’t a word we had in mind when we registered the domain, but that’s pretty funny. And if you enjoy thinking about Bionic Women when also thinking of lesbotronic.com, you’ll get no objections from us.
But actually, what we wanted to do when we started the thing was create our own little word that was some amalgamation of “lesbian” and “electronic” and/or something indicating the internet, obviously a website where lesbians could connect with other lesbians electronically.
Meanwhile, we’ve since been informed that urbandictionary.com has its very own definition for lesbotronic: “gay tendency, reference, or feeling.”
Based on that, some folks wrote in asking if WE were personally responsible for inserting this particular word into the lesbian vernacular, or had we somehow invented some word at the same time as someone else on urbandictionary.com, or was this a reference to some other phenomenon we were honoring with our domain name?
We swear we DID invent it ourselves independently (during a little party involving several pitchers of margaritas, actually), and hadn’t yet heard it outside our little circle.
We were actually pretty surprised to see it as a definition of anything anywhere outside our site, or to see our little word anywhere else at all (not referencing our site). And actually, according to godaddy.com (a popular domain registrar), urbandictionary was created sometime in 2001, whereas we registered lesbotronic.com in 1998.
However, there’s no reference to our site on urbandictionary nor any indication of the chronology of the definition. Bummer. So urbandictionary.com didn’t predate us with its definition, but that doesn’t necessarily mean someone else didn’t. But if someone else did predate us, it wasn’t apparent in their definition. In any case, no one registered it as a domain, so we think we were at the very least the first ones who felt strongly about the whole thing.
So we then did a Google search for lesbotronic, looking for any additional clues.
Most of the references were actually already about our site, but we also found one regarding a band called “Pintsize” that entitled their self-described “new heavy metal disco song,” Lesbotronic. According to amazon.com, that album was released in 2005. Heavy metal AND disco? Er. Hmmm. Did the song’s title have anything to do with us? We don’t know and didn’t bother contacting them, but based on a brief viewing of the band’s myspace page, we’re thinking probably not. But hey, cool song title! (grin)
We gave up after about 20 pages of Google results.
Or rather, we just got bored.
But we maintain that if there were folks on the internet that could potentially lay claim to the invention of the term “lesbotronic,” especially with regard to anything lesbian, they didn’t document themselves very well, definitely not before we did. So um . . . there?
Finally, one woman wrote in to say that a character on the popular Showtime TV series Queer as Folk (no longer in production, but as of this writing, still frequently played on a few networks) used our little word. However, upon viewing of the recommended episode in question with a remote and repeated rewinds, it seemed the word in question was actually something like les-bee-onic. It WAS used to indicate things of a lesbian nature, but NOT quite the same sounding word. No “tronic” sound with a T.
As far as we know, no other episode of this TV series nor any other have used our word?
If anyone else notices any instances of “lesbotronic” floating around that don’t specifically already deal with our site, feel free to let us know. If we find it sufficiently amusing, we might mention it here.
Do you do background checks? How do I know someone here isn’t an ax murderer?
Shorter Answer: NO, and . . . . not at ALL, you DON’T!
We don’t do background checks on ANY member, nope, not at all.
We also guarantee not a single solitary thing regarding any member’s ax murdering status. (Please refer to our Terms of Service.)
If you decide to participate in our service, you’ll have to determine for YOURSELF who is and who is not an ax murderer.
Of course, deciding who you want to meet and who you don’t, who you want to spend time with and who you don’t, who you might want to date seriously and who you don’t, etc., is something that every single adult human has to develop their own ability to do in order to function in life in general . . . right?
This isn’t different.
You’d decide all by YOURSELF that you are convinced that any particular person is worth meeting and not at all the ax type by using your own common sense and following a few commonsensical precautions. If you don’t already have a very good idea what those are, we have helpful advice in our advice section.
Longer Answer: (You have noticed that this site is free . . . right?)
There are matchmaking services that do public records background checks to flag criminal records, traffic violations, DUI’s, bankruptcies, marital status, and divorces.
Of course, they’re far from being free. You’ll pay quite a bit to get someone else to do that for you.
There’s another one out there that threatens to legally prosecute anyone using their site who turns out to be married or a convicted felon.
But again, not at all free.
Would we institute something like that in the future? Seriously doubt it. Again, we do want to keep the site free.
But other than the issue of cost, we’re also not in agreement with most of that stuff philosophically or practically. We think services like that often provide a very false sense of security for their members.
Not to encourage rampant paranoia, but some folks would say the most successful criminals are the ones who do NOT get caught.
You do realize that in order for there to be a public record of something, it would have to have been formally adjudicated, right?
That would mean the bad thing someone did was illegal, AND they got caught, AND convicted or otherwise officially recorded as having been the perpetrator of whatever-it-was in a court of law. Because otherwise, no service out there would be able to “flag” it.
So first, there’s the very real issue of whether or not a criminal has actually been caught. We’re not aware of any statistics on that, and it might very well be practically unstudiable. However, we imagine that if some sort of percentage could somehow be known, it probably would not be encouraging.
Furthermore, someone could constantly conduct themselves in very hurtful and/or dishonest ways in all their relationships, but in no way that was specifically illegal.
For a lot of people (including lesbians living anyplace same sex marriage is still illegal), legal marriage doesn’t apply to the idea of “cheating.” Even if you do live in one of the more enlightened geographies, what about live-in non-married significant others? That’s what many lesbians have been doing for . . . we dunno, but at least the last 200 years or so.
Someone could have an unmentioned squeeze at home, 3 more girlfriends on the side, be lying to everyone about everyone else, and simultaneously be looking for new women to deceive in the personals. No “background check” could ever completely reveal that state of affairs.
Meanwhile, if you and a new internet contact want to mutually do public record searches on each other before meeting in person, that’s something you can still definitely pursue. We’re certainly not stopping you. We’re just not going to do it FOR you, nor will we overcharge you for taking that task off your hands.
We think your most important weapons against “wrong” people are your own well-honed common sense and your own instincts.
No website could ever produce a form of dating that would be completely risk-free, despite what some willing to take lots of your money to tell you otherwise would have you believe.
Finally, we think choosing to place your safety and emotional health in the hands of someone else simply is not wise. No one else is ever going to be as invested in your own safety and well-being as YOU will be, no matter how much you pay them.
(But we do have a nice-sized amount of safety advice you can follow on your own in our advice section. It’s all free, and it all encourages you to take your own safety and security into your own hands.)
I received a strange email claiming to be from lesbotronic saying I’ve “won a contest” OR:
“need to collect my prize” and/or “need to send my financial information for a real estate situation” and/or “need to collect my huge piles of cash” and/or “need to register my winning lottery number” and/or “need to sign in for important real estate data” and/or “need to send my ‘secret code’ in for valuable winnings” and/or “need to send in my address and other personal info for my unexpected estate claim!!!!!” and/or
(anything else equally ridiculous or improbable-sounding along the lines of the above)
Is this valid? Should I respond?
Short Answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Longer Answer: Unfortunately, we’ve received many questions about this sort of total and complete garbage.
This sort of crap is NOT AT ALL coming from lesbotronic.
Repeat: NOT COMING FROM LESBOTRONIC.COM.
We have no “promotions” going on anything like the above, never have, never will.
Frequently, and very unfortunately, various reprobate criminals out there in the world will use the word “lesbotronic” (OR lots of other popular domains, not JUST us) to attempt to perpetrate some form of scam.
The actual domain owners (like us here at lesbotronic.com) didn’t actually send you the email, it was really sent by some reprobate scammer/spammer trying to collect information on people, probably to attempt identity theft and/or credit card fraud.
This frequently happens to a variety of popular sites, it’s usually referred to as “domain spoofing.” More on domain spoofing.
Specifically, “Domain spoofing refers to the use of someone else’s domain name when sending a message and is part of the larger problem of spoofing (the practice of forging the sender’s address on e-mail messages). Domain spoofing can also be used by malicious individuals in phishing scams, which try to lure consumers into divulging sensitive personal information by pretending the e-mail is from a trusted source, such as a consumer’s bank. Disclosure of such information can lead to identity theft and other online consumer fraud.”
I guess some of those aforementioned reprobate spammer/scammers noticed we have a popular site, thought that might mean some folks in the world would think us a “trusted source,” so they’ve appropriated the word for their own illegal purposes.
And again, this can happen to any totally legitimate domain. In fact, sadly, it’s actually MORE likely to happen with an older domain that has a lot of members but does NOT do anything nefarious with their info.
Those are the ones the criminals think people will trust enough to just hand over whatever identity-theft related info they’d like to have.
Meanwhile, this problem is definitely NOT about hacking, nor is it in any way shape or form about OUR database, nor does it mean our database was compromised in any way. Most of those receiving spoofed email are NOT actual members and/or customers of whatever is being spoofed.
Please also notice lesbotronic.com does not and never will collect the type of information on any of our members that could conceivably be used for identity theft and/or credit card fraud.
AGAIN, NOTHING that could ever be used to perpetrate any form of theft.
Really, you should never provide any significant personal info to any organization that initiates contact with you via email, or provide any significant info about yourself via email for anything you did not personally and specifically previously request.
And for those organizations with which you do have significant and important financial business, they won’t ask you to email them important stuff. They’ll do it over the phone or in person.
But just to make things super duper clear, here’s a list of things we’ve heard the scammers are requesting supposedly as lesbotronic.com:
Full Birth Name
Social Security Number or Other ID
Home Mailing Address
Country of Birth
City of Birth
Date of Birth
Legal Marital Status
Name of Legal Next of Kin
Mother’s Maiden Name
IRS Designated Occupation
Checking Account Number and Name of Bank
(any) Credit Card Number
See all that stuff above, the sort of stuff that someone could potentially use to perpetrate identity theft or credit card fraud?
We have NEVER and WILL NEVER ask for any of that stuff!
Oh, and we also don’t send you anything and request that you RESPOND to any email address other than one AT lesbotronic.com. The last domain spoof we became aware of spoofed the email as supposedly coming from our email address, but asked readers to reply to a YAHOO email address. That would be another clue (but it doesn’t have to be Yahoo, it could be anything other than lesbotronic.com).
We never send out anything at all except those emails that are directly related to things on the lesbotronic.com site, the community forum, the profiles, etc., or answers to any questions you send us yourself.
Please note: ALL OF THOSE COMMUNICATIONS WOULD BE INITIATED BY THE PERSONS SIGNING UP FOR THEM.
We never send out any random garbage, nothing ever requesting you send in a lot of personal info to win “cash prizes.” Never, never, never. I don’t think any reputable site would.
We will also never send you any attachments, never ask you to execute any software.
Also no requests for payment, any payment information.
Also, no, there isn’t anything ELSE we can do about it, other than to advise you not to respond to it.
(Since we didn’t send it in the first place, no, we can’t “stop sending it to you now.”)
And no, it actually was NOT sent on behalf of us. No. No NO NO NO NO.