7:23-7:50, 7:55-8:08, 8:14-8:54
Is your relationship status a bore? Want to find satisfaction outside your marriage? You've heard of Ashley Madison, but there's a new website in town, and it promises to take you where you want to go. A dating site designed for attached people seeking other attached people, folks around the globe have their eye on Victoria Milan.
This new website popped up in the past decade and calls itself a dating website for 'married and attached people seeking secret and confidential affairs.' With only 6.2 million users, it may not have the numbers that bigger dating sites do, but Victoria Milan wants you to regard them as a bit of a fresh take on the nature of infidelity.
To give you the best information on how it stacks up, I made it my job to explore all parts of Victoria Milan from front to back. Because if you're carrying on confidential affairs, you need to know that your safety isn't just some side issue. So does Victoria Milan feature options to set your heart ablaze, or is it just another database of bots that leaves needs unmet, leading to no spicy encounters, only a broken family?
When you first head on over to Victoria Milan, dating sites of yore pop into your head. For better or worse, Victoria Milan looks like all the rest - except for the ticker along the top proclaiming '6,784,360' new Victoria Milan members. Every two seconds or so, the number would tick up one more, adding to the tally of 'anonymous members.'
Details like that are exciting, but did it have any truth? Using a very scientific exercise, I checked whether Victoria Milan was telling it straight: I refreshed the page. Lo and behold, the number of Victoria Milan numbers reset back to 6,784,360. In scientific form, I checked the following day - and Victoria Milan still boasted the exact same ones: 6.784.360.
Not a great first impression, Victoria Milan. But I can see the situation from their perspective. These numbers did give a sense of possibility. They conveyed the idea that no matter your country or first language, people are out there, waiting for romance. I had concerns, but maybe Victoria Milan is just one of those platforms in dire need of a person who could dish some advertising tips.
I kept scrolling. Victoria Milan had misspelled words, but this site isn't geared toward anyone who's a native English speaker. Instead, it's based in Scandanavia and Eastern Europe. You can't exactly fault them for a couple typos when the development team probably hails from multiple countries.
But between the site's careless layout and having zero links to business interviews, news features, or any other things from across the web to make visitors feel like Victoria Milan is legit, I had doubts. Could Victoria Milan actually connect someone to friends and ladies looking for sex? All from a smartphone?
To test Victoria Milan further, I took the next step and made a profile. Usually, that's the easiest part of a dating site: set up an account, pick a screen name, input your location, and badabing, badaboom, you're in.
But not Victoria Milan. There's no clear 'register' button granting access to the screen where you make a profile. Instead, the options are 'login' or 'See Your Matches!' For some reason, the latter button is the one that lets you create a profile, and when you click the Victoria Milan login, there's no fine print redirecting you to register.
Frustrated by the website interface (like I imagine many people are), I kept going. Once you click the correct button, registration is a snap. Once you've shared your marital status, choose whether you're interested in hookups with men, women, or both (bonus points to Victoria Milan for including bi+ individuals!).
Then, they ask you for an email address (use a throwaway to avoid Victoria Milan spam), a username, and a password. Thankfully, you don't need to provide a phone number. Before you click 'confirm,' read the fine print: Victoria Milan plans to collect your data, and naturally, there's no way to opt out. While many apps give you an option to deny this 'service,' the website Victoria Milan forces your hand.
If you're okay with Victoria Milan harvesting your info, you then start answering questions about what you want. Choose from four options including 'something long term' and 'just curious and looking.' Then, browse a list of turnons like shy, unpredictable, and schoolgirl, and choose three to whittle down the perfect Victoria Milan profile matches for you.
Add your photo (which you can blur, to keep your activities secret), beef up your profile with a bio, and you're officially a Victoria Milan member. From there, filter your searches to view content and matches that mesh with your preferences.
Like other dating platforms of its kind, they know how to attract attention. Playing to your favorites, they lure you with photos total knockouts messaging you for adventure and confidentiality, - and in order to message back, you have to pay.
That's right - nothing on this website is free - unless you're a woman. Then, according to YouTube ads, everything's free, even if you're looking for other women for a ~nostringsaffair~. It figures. To verify, I made a dummy account posing as a woman in England, and it was true: Victoria Milan gave me free access. Although that's nice for women, it does imply that this website is a sausage party. If you're a man, it better be you intention pay for Victoria Milan, even if you're browsing men's accounts.
Trust the site to yield some NSA evening plans at the bar? Get ready to rack up those card charges, Android and desktop version alike, and get premium membership by selecting from these three tiers.
Premium lets you chat unlimited, see who liked/viewed you, request private photos, send gifts, and like others. For an additional $39.99/month, you can free up communication for any unpaying member to visit and reply to your VM or DM.
I got to hand it to Victoria Milan. Asking for that much money is a bold power game they're playing. In areas online like Reddit, it's standard to see complaints about pricing. That's a lot of cash; on the basis of my own Victoria Milan trial, I'm left wondering who's so desperate, they think it's worthwhile.
Two words: panic button. An emergency exit from the dating platform, the panic button is perfect for when your significant other or kid walks into the room and you need to pause in your venting those 'married and attached' frustrations (rights reserved). The panic button redirects you to a neutral website, and is the single most brilliant tool designed for the purpose of discretion, and is the creation we've all needed for so long. Now if only porn sites offered this same feature for similar reasons...
Another pro? On this website, an anonymous profile is everything. The company understands that you don't search for an affair hoping your identity and personal life become public knowledge. Companies like this know that feeling protected is of the utmost importance in the quest for passion.
That's why you aren't even allowed to choose a username or profile name that's your real name. And any pics you upload, obscure them by blurring them, putting a black box over your eyes, or using the quintessential mask sticker to obscure your face. Another thing in their corner? Because anonymity is key, Victoria Milan will never ask for Facebook, unlike other dating websites.
And finally, I love that anything goes. Whatever you want, you're within your rights. Reserved people can thrive just by accessing the profiles of others and sending messages through the app or a private email address, and bold folks can meet new beaus in a hotel - in theory.
This all seems too good to be true - and that's because it is. When you look at the first results that pop up on the screen, all of them are sending you the promise of your desire being realized, saying that all the fun in the world at your fingertips, free of shame.
In reality, Victoria Milan is stuffed with fakes. Part of the problem is the lack of user verification. When there's no way to confirm someone's identity, the website is open to scammers who make a textbook example catfish setup, luring men out of their mental health by asking for gifts and money in exchange for pictures that never come.
But scams aren't even the worst of it. The main issue is bots. A Medium writer (@openeyes.journalism) wrote a piece reviewing VictoriaMilan based on his own experience - and his finds are disheartening. For starters, all the women who messaged him in Dublin had suspiciously registered on the same day and all chose to message him at 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., like clockwork. These were programmed bots - and the proof is in the pudding:
Although the website had given him a 'sale' price significantly off the regular value to enjoy premium functions, he was quickly charged €60 - four times the 'sale' advertised. He didn't stand for it and immediately contacted customer support - who was mysteriously absent.
In fact, customer service as a whole is a sham on this dating site. I tried to unsubscribe from the Victoria Milan emails after signing up (because of course I did), and hitting 'unsubscribe' only redirected me to the homepage. I strongly doubt there are more than seven employees running this whole train wreck of a website.
By this point, I had almost no faith in them, and I checked reviews on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Both revealed one sorry point: nobody liked this website. In fact, lots of people downright hated it. The overall rating was a miserable 2.5 stars for Victoria Milan on both platforms. The summary of every review could be this: there's not a chance of meeting your dream girl or guy, no matter your age, area, or city. Girls and guys probably have a fake photo, their emails lead to dead ends (or extortion), and the subscription gets you absolutely zilch in return.
When you scroll through Victoria Milan reviews online, you'll notice something quickly: everyone says the 'dating experience' is a scam. VictoriaMilan review after review reveals endless dissatisfied customers. Many a complaint states that the system is designed to exploit every opportunity and convince desperate men to get subscriptions and enter a payment agreement in the name of flirting with bots. In fact, any positive review of Victoria Milan out there is so clearly fake that it would be laughable if the best interests of millions of European people weren't at stake.
Y'all. Stay away - stay far away. Any website claiming to hook you up with hotties toNIGHT has this true goal in mind: to mine your data and take your money.
Victoria Milan will not help you find a new partner and, as far as fostering a dating environment goes, it's on the bottom of my list in terms of a place to match and build relationships with others looking to cheat. You won't find an affair. All you'll find is that any plans to reunite with your spouse, salvage your marriage, or stay in your existing relationship are toast. Because although they claim security and privacy, there's no sense of community on the site to indicating your profile will amount to anything other than getting caught.
Even if you live in Malta and are hopeful that clients across many devices will be browsing pages looking for new winks and links with other singles, don't even try it. So let's wrap it up, kids, and roll the credits. If there's anything this website should copyright, it's being DOA.
One star. With so many technologies at our fingertips for dating, there are a million better ways to flirt with other partners in private. Don't even question it.