BeautifulPeople.com, the dating and networking community exclusively for good-looking people, has banished 30,000 "ugly" people after a virus named ‘Shrek’ allowed them to breach through the company’s selection barricades.
The Denmark-based company allows people to become a member only after getting the approval of its existing 700,000 members worldwide through a rating stage. But the virus attack allowed everyone to be accepted.
The company said that 30,000 ”unfortunate” people who were ”wrongly admitted” had to be banished from the site after its restored rating process rejected them.
Managing director Greg Hodge said, ”We got suspicious when tens of thousands of new members were accepted over a six-week period, many of whom were no oil painting."
"We responded immediately, repairing the damage from the ‘Shrek Virus’ and putting every new member back into the rating module for a legitimate and democratic vote. The result is that we have lost over 30,000 recent members.
In the meantime some of the new members had started dating on the site and have now lost all contact details of their probable partners. Among the recently dumped members, 11,924 belonged to the US, while about 3,156 were from the UK.
The company also said that on average, one in seven applicants is accepted and that the majority of successful new members come from the US, Denmark and France.
The countries with the highest rate of rejections are the UK, Russia and Poland with the UK and Russia having the least attractive male applicants in the world, said the company.
The company has said that it regrets the glitch, but added that the members got a temporary "slice of heaven."
Hodge said, "We have sincere regret for the unfortunate people who were wrongly admitted to the site and who believed, albeit for a short while, that they were beautiful. It must be a bitter pill to swallow, but better to have had a slice of heaven then never to have tasted it at all."
BeautifulPeople.com also said that it has set up a hotline to help recently rejected applicants deal with the hard news and can give tips for those wishing to re-apply.
It was initially believed that one of the 5.5 million rejects has created the ‘Shrek Virus’. However, the investigation, which is still on, indicates that an ex-employee might be behind the glitch, said the company.
The company added that it has hired a team of "beauty police from around the world" to guard against any further infiltrators.
Hodge said, "We have now launched version 3.3 of the site a month ahead of schedule, what you see when you visit BeautifulPeople.com today is a more sophisticated site and an even more exclusive and tightly guarded community of beautiful men and women only."
"We would like to reassure our community that the rating module has been restored to perfect working order. Every vote continues to count as we remain true to our founding principles; keeping the trolls out and the beautiful people in."
