Old Flames A Click Away

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Back in the 1990s, it was rare for a married person to reach out to a first love. Nowadays, about 8 in 10 people who contact a former lover are married, Kalish says, based upon the findings of her own Web site, Lostlovers.com.

Of course, most of them don't intend to get into trouble when they log on, and not all of them do.

"People are just surfing the Internet on a whim,'' Kalish says. "They may see some lost love and they say, 'What the heck' and send an e-mail.''

Sound familiar? If so, you are not alone. Reunion.com was created in 2002, says site spokeswoman Shari Cogan, and its growth has been "just unbelievable.'' The site has profiles for 34 million people, and is gaining as many as 40,000 daily, she says.

And Reunion.com is just one of several sites that make it easier than ever to track down an old friend. Classmates.com allows users to "leap through a portal to the best of your past'' and boasts a database of 60 million people who graduated from more than 200,000 schools.

The internet makes everyone a whole lot more accessible.