I have long suspected this... and now I have confirmation.
In April, I shut down my profile settings to go off the radar for a while. My rotation is full (for now) and I am planning to travel out of the country for 3 weeks in July. So no need to start any vetting of new POT's for a while. Of course, I've still been looking at new searches every 1-3 days because, well you never know... but I was doing so in stealth mode: No notice sent when viewing, hidden from searches, hidden last log in date, hidden start date. Then...
Yesterday my 90-day resubscription date hit. SA went to auto charge my card on file and it declined. Turns out I had not updated my latest card expiration date. I updated my info and made the payment last night around 10:00 pm. Once the payment was accepted, I logged off.
This morning. to my surprise, I have 8 interests (4 viewed, 4 favorites), and as I was looking at them a new message. That should not have happened. The only way a new POT should have found me was by knowing my profile LINK (not my name) and that seems very unlikely. So I checked my settings, and they are all ON.
No real harm done. Six of the 8 were the usual South America bullshit profiles. The other two are low-probability POT's. I replied to the message - dead end as she says she is leaving for Europe - Bon Voyage, Babe. Then I reset my settings.
Why did this happen? My best guess is this is what my old engineering team would call "expected behavior" when I filed a bug report. LOL I think SA does this deliberately on auto-renews to reinforce the SD's sense of value in the site. "Hey look! Thanks for your money - these chicks can't wait to bang you! Good thing you renewed!"
Anyone else see this?
Life is good
The Cat
All freebie accounts lose those valued features and technically you became a freebie account. Even if it was for only a few minutes or hours. LOL
I'm not surprised at all by your finding, Herb. But your confirmation is a real public service.
I've seen a similar effect when I change cities (not related to payment). I show three principal cities in my profile. When I want to be more visible in a *different* city, I'll replace one of my three principal cities with the one where I want to be more visible.
Like magic, I immediately attract more interest. Not just from chicks in the "new" city, but from chicks in my "old" cities as well.
I'm happy with my bang rotation of stewardess, realtor, and law student. But they can't always be where I am across this great land, so I don't mind this algorithmic feature. 
Rockford
Reason I gave up on SA a few years ago.
