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martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

Match.com? More like Match dot-con, claims watchdog: Cyber-lonely-hearts 'lured into forking out to view bot spam' [theregister.co.uk]:

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 [ftc.gov] (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?

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