Bad Match - Part Three: Spam, Scam, Thank you Ma'am!

Over the past six months, I've watched the quality of performance and profiles degrade, and had concluded that online dating site Match.com has jumped the shark. And then, the scammers began appearing in droves.

To understand why Match.com is in danger, see Bad Match, a review of technical problems and poor design. With so many underlying weaknesses, it's difficult to imagine how Match.com can survive the onslaught of potentially criminal activity.

To grasp the depth (and shallowness) of the bogus profile problem at Match.com, see Bad Match - Part Two: Fraudsters vs. Real Women Death Match(.com). If real people weren't trying to use Match.com to meet women, this would be funny. A little bit.

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Spam, Scam, Thank you Ma'am!

LEFT: Notice anything about the text of the first, third, and fourth consecutively added profiles? Notice anything about the model? She showed up in another profile an hour or so later... but... aren't you getting the point yet?

By the way, I wouldn't worry about Lovey sliding in there. If you don't realize that's a bogus profile in the first five words, you aren't paying attention.

RIGHT: A little something borrowed from Denise Milani, for a Match user named "HollyBaby00." The text of Holly Baby's profile revealed they're working on many online fronts: "I joined sugardaddie because..." Lucky for Match, the criminal element is not well organized -- yet.

BELOW: Match offers a relatively useless text search feature, but now and then, a string is so proposterous that you can find it reliably. Such is "At the given stage of a life..." On 2009-09-20, there were 27 profiles containing that text -- and as you can see, three had been added that day, using the same model's photos.

Some Things Never Get Old

LEFT: Two more consecutive pairings added 2009-09-23, each containing blatant duplication of multiple fields. More clues for scorable screennames -- good, rose, luv -- are you paying attention yet?

Identical text. Identical photos. If Match has not learned -- or doesn't care enough -- to catch these obvious fakes, being entered in rapid succession, how will the site function when scammers actually organize their strategy? Hmmm???

It seems oddly inconceivable, but nonetheless likely, that the situation will continue to degrade. Watch this space for more...