Mike Fitzgerald, BoneFish CEO Interview

OPW INTERVIEW -- Sep 18 -- Mike Fitzgerald is the CEO of BoneFish and interviewed with me on the subject of internet dating scamming and how to stop scammers. - Mark Brooks

What kind of scamming have you encountered on Bone Fish’s affiliate sites?
About 90% of the scamming on Bone Fish’s sites has come from Russian and African scammers. Russian scammers are primarily looking for people to send money to Russian women or to entice members to send airfares and give gifts, etc. 

African scammers are slightly different in that they send out emails relating tales of woe and stating that they have a great deal of money sitting in a bank account in Uganda and are looking for assistance to transfer it into an overseas bank account for a percentage of the sum (or similar).

Bone Fish has tried to combat this matter by bringing on-board a full time risk manager whose sole purpose is to deal with the scamming issue. I would say that at the moment, it is probably our number one priority as it affects our reputation with banks, members and affiliates, who are obviously being hit by the chargebacks on a weekly basis.

Do you ever encounter any types of scamming through the affiliates? Do you ever have any scammers sign up as affiliates?
About three years ago, we had someone from India register as an affiliate. However, upon seeing the affiliate’s average sales rocket about twice as high as our own, we realized that something was wrong. Their conversion rate was about 40-50% instead of 10-15%. Fortunately, we caught them at an early stage and cancelled their account. That's the only scammer I know of who actually signed up as an affiliate.

At the end of the day we try to cut scammers out before they become affiliates. As a result, we don't allow – and we heavily screen – new affiliates from certain countries. For example, potential affiliates from Russia, India and Africa.

How do scammers affect the reputation of your sites and services?
Members that have belonged to the service for two or three years and see some form scamming going on do tend to inform us of the problem so that we can remove the scammer(s) from the site. But, if he/she is a new member who has just registered, it is a very awkward situation and it makes us look very unprofessional. 

However, we do take measures to assure members that their information is safe and that they will meet genuine people on the site. We also take great measures to ensure that members are not contacted by scammers from Russia or Africa, because if they are contacted – especially within their first two or three weeks of being on the site – then it simply looks terrible.

What can the industry do to beat scammers?
Many a time I've looked on the internet for places that work like a “scammer central”. I've managed to find a few websites that list 5,000-7,000 members who are known scammers. However, I do not think that this is the right approach as it lists the names of the individual members (the scammers) that are contacting the members – not where they come from!

What I think the industry needs is a white list and a black list of IP ranges. For example, at Bone Fish Ltd we use an application on our credit card page that grabs the IP address. As such, we have blocked approximately 25% of all IP addresses in the world and still continually adding to the list on a regular basis. I’m hoping that this will catch some 95% of scammers.

With this in mind I don't think that having profiles of known scammers is the way forward. I think people need to sit down and actually look at the more technical side of it and determine where these people are actually coming from. Are they signing up in the UK, paying from Africa and then sending the messages from Africa? Or are they using IP masking tools to stop people from detecting their location? I think that these are the real issues rather than the specific members. I think we need to look at ISP and server-side solutions rather than having a great big database that's simply updated. Ideally, someone needs to put together a site from a technical point of view that will allow people to share techniques on how to block scamming.

Do you have any tips for smaller sites and services to beat scammers?
Yes, at Bone Fish Ltd we do employ a few measures that I am happy to share with you. I think the first thing smaller sites and services should do is get themselves an IP scanning tool which scans the IP addresses of all members that sign up to the site. Coupled with this, I would opt for one of the various merchants or banks on the internet, obtain a list of known high-risk countries and essentially impede all of these countries from being able to access the service – both on the credit card page and during the registration processes. (You have to remember that scammers can sign up in the UK and then pay through Africa, so special attention must be paid to these pages in particular).

The second thing I would recommend to smaller sites is a message frequency service which analyzes the number of messages a member sends out in a day. As such, owners of these sites can then analyze what is going out, and flag anybody who is sending 40 or 50 messages on a daily basis. This will help to assess who needs to be watched carefully and will essentially ensure that these members are not scamming other members. These are perhaps two primary things that will go a long way towards stopping scamming. 

And finally, the third thing I would do is have an email centre which stops .fr and .ru from logging into the service. The Ivory Coast uses .fr and Russia uses .ru. However, this will only work until scammers figure out that they are being blocked. But for the time being, it will certainly get rid of inexperienced scammers. Because every little helps. 

Comments

[Christian Singles]

Scamming is certainly becoming one of the biggest irritants for online dating sites.

Here at Single Christian Network we notice that as soon as spot their technique they find something new. What started long ago as Russian women posting model photos of 22 year old ladies has evolved and spread.

Now they post "normal" photos - middle age, average looking men and women that in no way seem out of the norm.

What started as a lady in Russia looking for some cash for a visa is now "Americans" visiting Nigeria to build a school for the poor and getting "stuck" there.

And while once it was easy to block an IP address or a block of them from Nigeria, they now use forged USA addresses and accounts from American companies.

They are getting smarter.

One "fun" thing we like to do with them - and we would encourage everyone to do something like this - is, instead of blocking them from filling out an application we just block them from getting inside. They take the time to fill out an application and then inquire about why they can't log in. They get a note back apologizing about the technical problem and invite them to fill out another application - and over and over until they finally catch on. It isn't much, but causing them to waste an hour filling out application forms means they have an hour less to do any actual scamming.

[Ross Williams]

Scamming is an issue for all successful dating sites.

Everyone running a dating site on our network benefits from Iovation protection - as far as we know, we're the only white label dating provider that uses Iovation to help reduce scammers.

Used in conjunction with other measures such as those described by Mike above, we're seeing real benefits with members staying on our sites for longer than ever.

Ross

[John]

I just started my free dating site (shameless plug: www.FindOneTrue.com) (within the last month) and already I'm seeing scamming. The first measure I've taken is to restrict message frequency to 3 minutes. This seems to be working well so far. Next I will start logging IP addresses of users and banning suspected scammers. I am slightly hesitant to do this because with dynamic IP addresses, I am concerned about banning legit users.

John

[Peter Hill]

Scam central? Pot calling kettle! I've been on Bone Fish now for about 3 years I've only had one genuine message, 100's of fakes. Things like "please read my profile and get in touch", yet the profile is empty! or has been deleted/hidden. Or profile says 40 years old yet d-o-b says 44 and I have to think the account has been usurped. That one genuine message was to tell me to FO as she said hadn't sent the message I got from her that I replied to and wasn't interested. Didn't seem very bothered that it quite definitely had her account ID on the message I got.

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlzliwjlNcNrrjqeYdQkOPduIj4x2UJdR8]

Unfortunately as long as people can sign up with an email address and unverified photo and information it's going to be tough to block the scammers.

I run East meet West a Russian brides dating site. I've done so since 1999 quite successfully. It is an affiliation with a network based in Ukraine. We have very little in the way of scammers. This is due mainly to the fact that all the women have to visit an agents office in person with their passport and another form of id. It's very difficult for scammers to operate through our service.

Of course it's not 100% bullit proof and we have come across agencies who work together with women to try and operate scams usually in the form of letter writing which is the main source of our income.

We're also inform our male members to let us know of any solicitations for money for whatever reasons. They also let us know very quickly if letters seem generic.

We also receive copies of every letter sent and received and each agent has to keep the hard signed copies of every letter a woman writes for 3 years and we can ask to see them at any time without notice.

We generate a lot of income for around 100 agents throughout Russia, Ukraine and the FSU. We have a number of agents still with us since day one and literally 1000's of honest women looking for a decent guy to marry.

Unfortunately Russian women all get tarred with the same brush when in reality there are a lot of very honest women in these countries just looking for love like many others. I should know I've been married to one since 2001!

I just wanted to put across the other side of the arguement and defend my wife's country and reputation!

Phil

[Dan]

"They get a note back apologizing about the technical problem and invite them to fill out another application" -- so you basically lying to another humanbeing -- you sure you guys from _CHRISTIAN_ singles network???

[Rich]

I too have had experience with Bone-Fish sites, obviously they don't want the Russian and Nigerian scammers giving them a bad name they're doing that all by themselves. The number of messages I've had where they haven't read the profile or when I look at theirs they aren't looking for single guys is ridiculous but then I believe the messages are not real anyway but automatically generated spam with the sole purpose of getting me to pay to be able to reply, I did once when I was new to the internet but guess what as soon as they had the money all the messages stopped until the subscription expired.