Some even thought it was a ploy to amass an email database to sell, and expressed concerns to that effect over house email lists.

"This site is brilliant," wrote Jenn E. Clark `02 wrote to Quincy-open last week. "You can never find out the person who put in your name or sent the date request. It's programmed to just say "no matches."

She and other angry students even discussed the possibility of calling and emailing Ree himself to complain.

But Ree emphasized that by no means is the website a business, nor is it intended to be one.

"It's just something I put up," he said. "If people wanted to collect emails, there are much easier ways to do it."

The "date list" feature of the website where visitors can send emails to prospective matches and guess who sent emails is one of the faulty aspects of the website, which Ree said he is in the process of trying to fix.

The website also has a ranking system for pictures that registered users post, and visitors decide if they would or would not date the person pictured.