IOVATION - Feb 17 - Twenty years ago, online dating wasn’t even a thought. Ten years ago, it was weird. Five years ago, it was new and exciting. Today, it’s as normal as milk and bread. As online dating gradually gained popularity and acceptance, scammers were coming up with ways to take advantage and perfecting their craft. And now it’s a full-time job for them. In the last 90 days, 230,000 fraud and abuse attempts were reported to iovation from dating sites alone, including:
• Spamming – 90,000
• Scams and solicitations – 30,000
• Inappropriate content – 20,000
• Chat abuse – 17,000
• Profile misrepresentation – 15,000
• Credit card fraud – 14,000
• Identity mining / phishing attempts – 12,000
iovation has many more categories specific to dating, including bullying, account takeovers, under age members, and so on. What’s unique to their globally shared system is that their clients can choose what to take action on or not. Dating sites can specify which type of behavior to protect their users from.
The full article was originally published at iovation blog, but is no longer available.
I believe online dating sites can be a safe alternative to traditional dating as long as the proper precautions are used. The most important precaution would be taking the time to really get to know who you meet online. Remember everyone is a stranger until you really learn enough about them.
Posted by: Mel L., MBA | Feb 19, 2011 at 08:41 AM
iovation continues to pick up major new clients. They've also upgraded their software, and downgraded their pricing of late. Nice.
(FD: iovation is a sponsor of OPW)
Posted by: Mark Brooks | Feb 21, 2011 at 07:15 AM