CONSUMERSDIGEST – July 8 – Carole Markin went on a date with a man whom she had met on Match.com. She was raped. Later she found that the man had a history of violence. Match.com now screens its users against the National Sex Offender registry databases and started to do so after Markin sought a court order that required the company to screen. According to FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), 4,467 people reported being the victim of such crimes in 2012. That’s down from 5,663 in 2011. Niche dating sites market themselves by claiming that they have created a safer microcommunity of people. However, they aren’t immune to the fake profiles. Experts say online dating services are pockmarked with abandoned, inactive or fake profiles. Mark Brooks, an online-dating-industry analyst, estimates that ~10% of profiles are fake on some dating sites. Brooks warns that users shouldn’t believe that just because they paid a membership fee that they are buying a seal of approval on a potential mate. He says consumers pay for the cultivation of a community and access to knowing which people in a specific area are “single, available and motivated.” He tells us that automated software has made it easy to start an online dating service and that a lot of unmanned services exist. Conducting a background check is an imperfect solution because the databases are incomplete. “We don’t want to give a false sense of security to anyone,” says Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of Match.com. “Match.com is no different than society. If you go out to a bar and meet someone that you don’t know, you should be careful.”
by Dianna Dilworth
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