Love Is Stopping Online Dating Scammers
The online dating world will converge in Miami in a few weeks at the annual iDate 2010 conference billed as “the largest industry gathering of the year” that covers all business aspects of the dating and social networking markets. ThreatMetrix will be exhibiting at iDate in booth #506, if you’re attending the conference let us know and we can set up a time to meet.
Online dating and matchmaking is over a $1.1 billion dollar industry in the U.S. alone, according to IBISWorld (www.ibisworld.com), the world’s largest independent publisher of U.S. industry research. The heightened awareness in the online dating world around scams and scammers is likely to push the topic into the sessions and conversations at iDate. ThreatMetrix helps dating sites identify and stop online dating scammers. Dave Perez, CEO of EDating for Free—a ThreatMetrix customer—underscores the importance of fraud prevention for his online dating sites this way: “We typically process over 350 new registrations a day. We’ve significantly reduced the number of scammers that gain access to our site’s functionality while reducing the time spent determining who to register or deny to less than 30 seconds. ThreatMetrix is a ‘no-brainer’ for dating sites like ours. It has made our site a safer, better protected community while enhancing the user experience.”
Online dating companies – like any other online community or subscription site – are subject to fraudsters around the world. In the case of Christian Dating for Free, one scenario involved overseas fraudsters from Nigeria who pretended to be located in the U.S. and then attempted to extract money using a money order scam. After establishing the confidence of another community user, the overseas fraudster would send a fake money order and ask the U.S.-based user to deposit it into their bank account and wire money back to them in Nigeria via Western Union. Unfortunately, in most instances the money order turned out to be fraudulent and the user was responsible for paying back the money to their bank.
Once a scammer is tagged by ThreatMetrix, they do not receive a confirmation email on their next registration attempt. ThreatMetrix data is integrated to a Christian Dating for Free home grown dashboard so that their staff can quickly and easily review registrant data to determine whether or not to block a user.
Doron Kim, president and founder of Edating for Free, Inc., parent company of Christian Dating for Free, Catholic Dating for Free, and Black Christian Dating for Free explains that “With ThreatMetrix, we can see the bad guys right away. Now we see the true data, true city, true IP, and true ISP. In less than five seconds, we can determine if a user who claims that they are in Boston is actually using an IP in Lagos.”
Trust is the bedrock on which online dating services are built. Members must trust one another and they must trust their dating sites to do their best to protect them from scammers. Nobody wants their mystery date to be a dud—let alone a scammer.
David Evans, a dating industry expert who publishes the Online Dating Insider has some great pre-conference tips for the Internet Dating conference that I recommend you check out if you’re headed to iDate 2010 in Miami.
- Tom
