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Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

nytimes.com

131–140 of 508 posts

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#131
post #84

Back when I was single, I was on a dozen dating sites. It was frustrating as heck to keep getting led on by fake profiles. eHarmony is the worst: they actually sold my email address to spammers. How do I know this? I have my own domain, and use a unique (hard to guess) email address for each site I have to give an email address to. So it was trivial to nail eHarmony as the culprit. Someone has already linked to the O…

They may not have sold it — they may have just had their database hacked. I used to use unique email address per site too, and at least one was clearly hacked rather than sold.

How do you know?

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#132
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same thing with a gmail address -- just do myemail+uniqueid@gmail.com, because gmail drops everything after the + for routing the email but still tells you which address it was sent to.

I used to do this, but it is troublesome some times because some websites use libraries that strip or replace the plus sign and the final email ends up being an address that you don’t have access to. Most of the time this is not a problem because you can create the account again with the correct email, but I have lost a few good usernames in some popular websites because I pulled this trick on them, Gravatar is one o…

> are rookies or do not have time

Reputable websites don't have an incentive to strip out the ID. It is only websites like "sold out" dating websites or otherwise nefarious websites that have that incentive in the first place. So, name+id@domain.com is still useful for filtering and indexing, and in fact if a website does strip out the ID you should ask yourself why would they need to do that.

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice to have a dating site where potential matches were verified, including height, weight, and photo. Perhaps have them visit a kiosk in a participating business to get a photo taken from a standard angle (no "myspace" angles) along with a verified height and weight (stand on a scale!)

Is people misrepresenting themselves something you encounter frequently? Seems like a short sighted move.

[deleted]

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#134
post #6
post #4

The FTC needs to come down hard on this. Extremely hard. This isn't just a trick, it's outright fraud. They're playing with people's emotions and not just giving them nothing - they're abusing people's most basic need of feeling loved. Think about how vulnerable people become when they're searching for love. And then this corporate giant comes in with an army of psychologists, A/B tests, and analysts to figure out ho…

I agree and will add that all dating apps do things like this. They prey on lonely people using false hope. Tinder even introduced paid “boosts” (pay to be shown to users who otherwise might never see you), which is identical to a slot machine.

[deleted]

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#135
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, isn’t this exactly what Apple is doing with Sign in with Apple?

yes. But that doesn't mean it's possible, or Gmail would be doing it too. they have PhD's and stuff. (or used to). so for sure it isn't possible for some reason, even if someone else is doing it. what other explanation can there be? why would they just have a glaring security hole like that, allowing anyone you try to give a trackable email to with + to just remove it with a regex? It doesn't make sense. there must b…

Because there is a top tier spam filter that is powered by the ai, and cloud computers? qed qft

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#136

Back when I was single, I was on a dozen dating sites. It was frustrating as heck to keep getting led on by fake profiles. eHarmony is the worst: they actually sold my email address to spammers. How do I know this? I have my own domain, and use a unique (hard to guess) email address for each site I have to give an email address to. So it was trivial to nail eHarmony as the culprit. Someone has already linked to the O…

eHarmony is disgusting. Or they were, the one time I tried to use their service ten years ago.

My wife and I had been separated for a while and in the divorce process. (We were and remain on friendly terms, but it was definitely over.) I thought I would check out some dating services, and eHarmony sounded like one that wasn't sleazy or weird.

So I filled out their lengthy multipage onboarding form, with all kinds of personal questions where they ask you to write heartfelt essays about various things.

At the beginning they asked my marital status and went on from there through the whole questionnaire. After I entered all of my information and wrote my personal essays, they got to the last page and said:

"Sorry! We don't serve your kind. You are separated! Come back when your divorce is final."

Those weren't the exact words, but that was the message.

Now if a dating site wants to serve only a certain market, and if they don't want to serve people who are separated but not yet fully divorced, I totally respect that! But they need to say it up front after asking your marital status.

Instead, they led me through the entire questionnaire, asking all sorts of personal questions, without even a hint that the very first question about my marital status was going to disqualify me.

And then they offered no way for me to recover any of the information I had just entered into their site: all the essays, personal questions and answers, all gone.

No online service of any type, dating or whatever, should ever do this to anyone.

Luckily, I'd had the sense to copy and paste all my little essays into a text file and not trust them to give them back to me. That just seemed like common sense. But in the case of eHarmony, it was necessary!

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#137
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same thing with a gmail address -- just do myemail+uniqueid@gmail.com, because gmail drops everything after the + for routing the email but still tells you which address it was sent to.

What's frustrating is that very many sites know of this method and simply trim the "+uniqueid" from a gmail.com address before inserting it into their database.

Pay for your email address to solve the problem. On my email provider, I can create a catchall alias: *@example.com will end up in my johndoe@example.com mailbox.

So, instead of doing johndoe+hn@example.com, I can do hn@example.com.

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#138
post #20

I think it's a fatal flaw in the dating site business model, to be honest. Their incentive is for you to stay on the site for as long as possible. If you could find a relationship quickly and then they would leave the site quickly. This would reduce the amount of ad and subscription revenue, in addition to reducing the size of the pool of "potential matches", discouraging those who have more trouble finding someone.

Okcuipd (and Sparknotes!) co-founder Christian Rudder wrote an article entitled "Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating" saying exactly that. When Match Group acquired them, they took it down. I found a mirror, though. https://web.archive.org/web/20190429100515/https://static.iz...

That’s brutal.

My new hypothesis is that Match acquired OKC just to get Rudder to STFU.

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#139
post #20

I think it's a fatal flaw in the dating site business model, to be honest. Their incentive is for you to stay on the site for as long as possible. If you could find a relationship quickly and then they would leave the site quickly. This would reduce the amount of ad and subscription revenue, in addition to reducing the size of the pool of "potential matches", discouraging those who have more trouble finding someone.

In reality, dating sites/apps are really first date apps (even when they're being honest, not like here). I would like to see a start up that will connect you to someone, but their business model is around keeping you connected. So much of their tech is around curating good dates and helping you maintain a healthy relationship.

Re: Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says

#140
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okcuipd (and Sparknotes!) co-founder Christian Rudder wrote an article entitled "Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating" saying exactly that. When Match Group acquired them, they took it down. I found a mirror, though. https://web.archive.org/web/20190429100515/https://static.iz...

That's an amazing article. (Like, good enough that I'm not just upvoting you, but also telling everyone else to read it. It's worth it.) I had no idea the numbers were that bad. And I can see why it got taken down after the acquisition.

So good that I won’t just upvote your comment but again tell people: read it!
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