We sent what was supposed to be a private message to a handful of select property owners through a website listing on which they pay to advertise.

Well, it doesn’t look like their messages are very private, because within just 27 minutes of using their individual contact form on the website to send a message, we received an email from the company they paid for their listing, with the following message:

You better stop writing to our advertisers with your sales chat. Fair competition is okay, unfair leads to trouble.”  (Whatever that means?)

Now, this doesn’t necessarily prove that they monitor messages to screen and provide your leads to other property owners, but it does allow for such activity.  Shouldn’t a private message to you, just be a message ONLY to you?  Why does a company receiving your money for advertising need to be reading your messages from your leads?  That just seems strange to us…