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On Wednesday, the FTC alleged in a legal complaint that Match.com and other dating sites owned by Match group broke US law when they let accounts known to be fraudulent message netizens who had set up free profiles.
The problem, the regulator says in its Texas court paperwork (PDF), starts with the dotcom's business model of letting users join for free but charging them to view messages, or to see who is interested in them, and send replies.
In this case, the FTC says that the site allowed obvious scam accounts that had been banned from contacting paid customers to message people with free accounts. The free users were not told who was contacting them, nor see the content of the love note, nor that the sender had been flagged as a scammers.
Rather, the users were told they would need to upgrade to a paid account in order to see that sexy memo, and only then, after coughing up cash, were they notified that they were being courted by a bogus profile. In other words, the FTC says that not only did Match allow scammers to operate on its site, but it also used them to make money.
What's a lonely heart to do?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 26 2019, @04:59AM (6 children)
Match has been pulling crap like this for over a decade. They keep old accounts active. They have their employees play at being eligible singles. When your account has just expired, that's when you get mystery messages one of which could be the future love of your life, but almost certainly isn't.
Years ago for a birthday gift, I received 3 months with Match. Created a profile and tried to find matches. I strongly suspect Match was wasting my time by mixing dead accounts into the search results, and so I was likely sending messages to people who were no longer using Match. Doubtless my messages were used to try to get them to renew. Meanwhile, the response rate was a truly abysmal 10%. And no one initiated contact with me during the 3 months I could have received messages. I did not renew, did not get to read the mystery messages that suddenly arrived with such suspiciously convenient timing for Match, and never again used a pay dating site. Jerks. They deserve huge penalties. Maybe even shut them down.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by progo on Thursday September 26 2019, @05:18AM
Government moves real show when it doesn't care.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @01:27PM (3 children)
Let's not just blame the one site, when IAC owns Match and multiple dating sites [iac.com] including the open sewer that is Plenty of Fish. They haven't broken OKCupid yet at least.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @04:12PM (2 children)
OkCupid is badly broken. I had a lot of luck with it years ago by messaging the women that visited my page. But now you can't message anybody unless you both opt in and as a result, rather than getting a response half the time, I don't bother at all with the site.
The problem with these sites more than anything else is that there's a conflict of interest. They stop making money when you find somebody. There's an incentive to give matches that are just good enough to keep people on the site and no more.
Similarly Zoosk keeps trying to set me up with single mothers even though I've explicitly stated that it's a deal breaker, but parts of the site don't show that information. They also don't check to see that age ranges are compatible, so I get a lot of visitors that are too old for me.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 26 2019, @09:19PM (1 child)
> there's a conflict of interest. They stop making money when you find somebody.
Lot of businesses have this inherent conflict. Doctors, automobile repair services, and, yes, software engineers are all working against their self-interests. The faster they fix a problem, finish a job, the sooner they're out of work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27 2019, @12:27AM
The difference is that those other things are repeat business in most cases. Or at least they get word of mouth. You very quickly run out of people to refer to a dating service as your friends and social circle get married.
Yes, you probably won't be involved in many law suits, but you might be and if you're not, you might know somebody that is.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 26 2019, @05:23PM
Seems like a pretty straightforward case of fraud, to me.
Selling a service based on messages from people you know aren't real (aka lies).
Glad the FTC is going after them.