ACCC goes after Australian dating website scammers
If you’ve used the internet for more then ten minutes in your life you’ve invariably come across a dating website scam.
Much in the same vein as lottery scams, where you receive emails advising you you’ve won international lottery draws you never entered, the dating scam email is usually features some unbelievable good looking woman telling you she saw your profile on a dating site you never signed up to.
Hi there QTPIE!
I saw ur profile on blahblah.com Come see me be sxy ur soooo cute! XOXOXO
or
Sexy girl of your dreams sent you a kiss/hug/wink/nudge/flirt/poem/blowjob!
Click here to reply!
After a while you can’t help but question the authenticity of these sites in general, especially if it’s one of the larger well known sites.
Here in Australia when it comes to things localised like dating sites, the market pool is instantly a lot smaller leaving things more intimate.
What you’ve got here is a bunch of ‘local’ dating sites competing for a small number of online dating punters. With larger sites like RSVP advertising “over 1.3 million” members and “1000 new singles each day”, the smaller dating sites in Australia are competing in arguably a pretty saturated market.
Let’s face it, there’s only 22 million people in Australia. Take out children and old people (viagra isn’t subsidised, yet) and the technologically inept and you’re probably left with around half of that again.
So… you’re trying to compete with the larger boys and you’re a big startup. Why not employ the shadier tactics of online dating to lure people in?
Whilst not as blatantly obvious as sending messages to people who have never been to your site, the ACCC are going after Australian dating website Red Hot Pie for sending fake messages to existing members.
The concept is pretty simple, it’s free to sign up but if you want to have any interaction with people you need to cough up money. With end users unable to separate bogus profiles from legit ones beyond their own intuition, why not send out flirty messages to existing members to ‘encourage’ them to sign on as premium members?
This seems to be what the ACCC have caught Red Hot Pie doing, enough so that they’re willing to take Pie’s parent company Jetplace to court over it. From what I understand the ACCC has a pretty good track record legally when it comes to taking on cases so it’ll definitely be interesting to see if they get them.
Personally I don’t have much experience with online dating sites. Whilst I do love the ingenuity of pairing a location lookup (those ‘Sleep with 999 girls in
Most of us have come out the other end cynical as all hell. Simply put, “there are no girls on the internet”.
In some ways I envy today’s internet users who got into the game after things had been polished up and somewhat regulated. Then I read about guys like this and thank my lucky stars I’ve surfed through the initial craziness and see dating sites as virtual STD’s.
New Yorker Sean McGinn, (is) suing dating site Match.com for keeping around profiles of former users so that it would look like the site had far more romantic prospects than it did.
McGinn is suing over deception, because he sent out many emails to profiles that were essentially dead. Match.com caused him “humiliation and disappointment,” and he wants to stop Match from hurting the feelings of singles “who feel rejected when their e-mails get no reply.”
Guy joins website and then has a cry when he gets rejected by profiles of people who signed up after watching some late night tv and never came back?
Oh the humanity.
I have a sneaking suspicion someone is going to get their arse handed to them and experience a whole new level of humiliation and disappointment.
January 1st, 2010 at 1:46 pm anonymous(Quote)
The ACCC is prosecuting the owners of the bogus dating service Red Hot Pie. com.au.
The ACCC does not prosecute lightly nor does it do so unless it has a strong expectation of winning.
Good luck to Sean McGinn in his battle for justice against the equally odious operators of Match.com.
The entire internet dating scene is so hopelessly corrupt that I would personally advise people to avoid it altogether.
Sites are not just infiltrated by scammers, but all too often the scammers are encouraged by dating service operators who do nothing to evict fraudulent account holders no matter how many complaints they may receive or how much evidence is offered to show that a given profile belongs to a scammer.
But as the Red Hot Pie saga in Australia reveals the owners of dating sites sometimes orchestrate the scamming themselves.
Kudos to the ACCC for going after these frauds and to all other individuals who are drawing the attention of fair trading authorities and law enforcement to the activities of these criminals.
This is only the tip of a very large iceberg.
So if you have been scammed by an online dating service do not hesitate to notify the appropriate authorities.
March 27th, 2010 at 6:14 am M Webb(Quote)
There’s a bit more about the RedHotPie scam here as the ACC are taking action http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/900716
RHP have been caught conning people into paying for membership by creating fake profiles and sending bogus messages, the claim that “These profiles were used as part of the site’s User Security Suite (USS)” is quite honestly a joke and I do hope that the ACC see it as that and takes action against the sites owners.
The owners of RHP also purchased a UK site sometime back fabswingers.com I suspect that this will go the same way, in the meantime some of the claims they make on the site are quite amazing considering the RHP scam, here’s a couple of my favourites;
“FabSwingers is free to use with no charges or subscriptions getting in the way” (they have silver and gold memberships, so not quite true)
“We think so-called “recurring billing” is sneaky and we’ll never do it.” (Amazing all things considered, this appears on their upgrade page)
There are some good sites out there that don’t use these underhand tactics, it would be a shame if they were all tarred with the same brush due to the RHP scam, sdc.com seems to be pretty good although you have to pay, or if you want something thats really free I’d go for either plentyoffish.com or swingersheaven.com.au
August 5th, 2010 at 3:13 am Sidd(Quote)
It’s high time some one took action on those scam dating sites. Some of those sites really look like they were full of dummy profiles or profiles lifted off some really genuine dating site.
But, what happens here is one cannot really fathom the scam unless he first signs up and then it is too late.
August 5th, 2010 at 2:00 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Not that I’ve got extensive experience in using dating sites or anything, but surely you get that nagging feeling that something’s not quite right when you browse profiles (no signup required) and see all these hot girl profiles?
They’re almost as comedic as those ‘date hot girls in your area’ ads that scrape your ip address to lure you into clicking. Moreso living in Taiwan and seeing white girls in the ads asking if I want to meet up lol.