They say things like beauty is only skin deep, that it’s in the eye of the beholder. Well, for a dating website for beautiful people only, a mysterious ‘Shrek’ virus resulted in 30,000 new members being dumped for not being beautiful enough.
The Danish-born social networking site BeautifulPeople.com was attacked by a computer virus and suddenly 30,000 new members joined the website.
The ‘Shrek’ virus attacked the software used to screen potential members and apparently standards slipped.
The site’s catchline is “beauty lies in the eyes of the voter” and so only those deemed beautiful could be allowed to join.
It has been suggested the virus that caused standards to slip may have been posted by a disgruntled ex-worker.
The site’s owners got suspicious when tens of thousands of new members were accepted within six weeks and now it has begun axing the new members at an estimated cost of US$100,000.
According to The Guardian, BeautifulPeople.com caused anger in Ireland when it said Irish men were among the ugliest in the world – based on the reasoning that only 9pc of Irish male applicants to the site were accepted.
Only 20pc of Irish women were accepted, compared with 70pc of Swedish women.
