301-Fake Online Dating Profiles Targeted by $1.5 Billion Lawsuit
According to a recent article published in the NY Daily News entitled Florida mom’s photos used in more than 200 bogus Match.com profiles: $1.5 billion lawsuit, a part time model and actress claims that her pictures have been used “in hundreds if not thousands of fraudulent profiles” posted on the company’s dating sites over the past six years.
The class action suit goes on to say that, “Thousands of others, including celebrities, soldiers and adult actresses, have had their pictures plucked from Facebook and other sites and used for bogus profiles as well — even though they are not and never were members of Match’s dating sites.
The phony profiles are often created by scammers in other countries for “criminal purposes,” which include “romance scams” that “entice victims to send money to people outside of the country,” said Avalos’ lawyer Evan Spencer.
The Federal suit asserts that Match.com also creates its own bogus profiles and that the company could easily crack down on the numerous bogus profiles but chooses not to.
Does it really surprise anyone that Match and other online dating sites are home to thousands of fake profiles? Seriously, all you need to sign up and create a profile on one of these sites is an email address, and I don’t need to tell you how long it takes to create a new email address — a couple of minutes?
And it’s not only scammers and spammers you need to worry about. I recently had a conversation with a single woman who told me she had several profiles on a dating site, each with a different description and photos, in order to attract different types of men. She didn’t see anything dishonest or misleading with creating multiple profiles. All you need is a few email addresses and anything goes!
Most online dating sites don’t make enough (if any) of an effort to get rid of fake and duplicate profiles because these profiles increase their number of users which translates into higher advertising rates/revenue and increased enterprise value. Their willing to let real users endure the spam and scams in order to boost their metrics.
When I developed Jzoog I specifically targeted the problem of fake and duplicate profiles by integrating Facebook login into the site. If you want to use Jzoog you need to have a Facebook profile with a minimum number of friends. It’s still possible to get around the system, but it’s much harder than just creating a fake email address. Fakers won’t bother going to all the trouble when there are so many easy targets (other dating sites) they can use.
So why won’t “the other” dating sites require Facebook (or other established social media) login? Because if they did their user and profile numbers would drop significantly.
I’m more concerned with providing Jzoog users with an honest, spam and fake free online dating experience. so, who are you going to trust?
We also have a minimum friend requirement which makes it harder for scammers to create fake FB profiles, but you’re right … there’s no way to prevent someone who is determined to scam. But if we make it difficult they’ll just go to places where it’s easy, like most other dating sites.