FOX BUSINESS – Sep 27 – The FTC alleged Tinder, OKCupid, and Plenty of Fish relied on "fake accounts created by fraudsters" to entice new users between 2013 and the middle of 2018. Match also "exposed consumers to the risk of fraud by providing recent subscribers access to communications that Defendant knew were likely to have been sent by persons engaging in fraud." In Nov '18, the FTC offered to resolve its potential claims via a consent judgment mandating certain changes in the company's business practices, as well as a payment in the amount of $60 million. No resolution was reached. The FTC referred the matter to the DOJ. The DOJ opted not to pursue the civil case and referred it back to the FTC who then filed a lawsuit "making completely meritless allegations supported by consciously misleading figures."
by Jason Schott
See full article at Fox Business
Mark Brooks: Scammers are sometimes tough to identify. Their activity can lead to increases in conversions. Good for short term profits. Terrible in the long term for both impacted users and the dating brand. Once a scammer has been identified at a reasonable level of confidence, the best practice is to notify users that they've been in contact with a scammer and to block the scammers device and ideally communicate their device id to other dating apps so they can be proactive in quarantining that device from gaining access to users again. Seems to me the FTC is putting a solid heal down on anything that alludes to us not being anything less than super aggressive against scammers. Will legislation follow? The DOJ kicked this back, so perhaps not…quite yet. iovation, Scamalytics, Spectrum, Threatmetrix, Kount, 41st Parameter. There's a raft of scammer id tools available for dating apps. The best dating apps make good use of automated tools and review/abuse teams to maintain the highest possible quality of real communications from real people. It's a shocker that Match is embroiled in this offense from the FTC, but important that we all take the hint and get our best game on when it comes to kicking scammers asses. (Full disclosure, iovation, Kount and Scamalytics are prior clients of Courtland Brooks)
