Comment by kyledrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kyledrake | Hacker News Reader

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I know a lot of the people that are in charge of removing these scammers (they're not really spammers as much) from OKCupid and Match. The idea that they are conspiring with these scammers is mind-blowingly insane. Why would they? Match makes plenty of money charging a highly legitimate subscription for their excellent service of helping us find people we love. What possible benefit would they get out of conspiring on western union money scams with morally and economically bankrupt people that consult witch doctors to gain internet fraud powers (I'm not making this shit up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26Eks801oc) and can barely type out english?

My suspicion (without knowing or asking) is that the scammers are probably using profiles stolen from other people, and this crazy lawsuit lady/lawyer/seriously-who-gives-a-fuck decided that there was a conspiracy between the two, while the reality is that Match is working their asses off (especially on holidays like Thanksgiving because the scammers assume people are on vacation and double-time it) to ban the scammers from the site.

Call a piece of shit a piece of shit. This is a hail-mary attempt by asshole lawyers to extract money from, unlike them, a productive industry that makes money from providing us with a useful service and doing a good job. If I was as big of a shithead as these people were, I would need about 1.5 billion dollars worth of opulence to forget how horrible I was too.

If they're interested in suing scammers, they should sue themselves.

I've made catfish hunting on Plenty of Fish into an entertaining game. Once you know what to look for, it is pretty easy. The biggest tip-off are well-composed photos. I'll see a profile with those kind of photos and throw them into google image search. I've got about an 80% hit rate there and of those, I'd say 19 out of 20 are fakes (models, photos on multiple profiles in different countries, etc). Another approach is to do a google search on a sentence in the profile's self-description to see if that same sentence has been lifted from somewhere else.

What I don't understand is why the dating sites haven't automated the process. They could could do a google image search on every uploaded photo and any hits would be forwarded to a human for investigation. They could also keep an internal blacklist of photos and well-known scammer cut-n-paste self-description text. The fact that they aren't doing that (because it is so easy for me to do it on active profiles) suggests apathy.

Putting all other things aside, I know the incentive for the websites to outsource somebody to create fake profiles (see the comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6823194). But what's the incentive for the 'scammers'? How can they 'scam' people on match.com by creating fake profiles? By making them come all the way to Nigeria and rob them? Give me a break.

I am not a big fan of the lawyers, but you sound too biased with statements like - "Match is working their asses off" "their excellent service", "piece of shit a piece of shit".

Gathering info for a future scam? Match seems like a good vector to get people to divulge personal details that then make a later "it's your friend john, I'm stuck in the airport and need you to wire me some money" scam work.

You could use Facebook, but I have no reason to tell people on Facebook details about my past. They're my friends, they already know. Dating sites are the best way to get a stranger to tell you something personal.

Hi there, I worked at Match for a while and the basic scam pattern I saw was this: a scammer will create an account and send a ton of messages to recently active users, the users that respond will be immediately prompted to take the conversation to email (away from Match's PM system), and once they're off of Match they ask for more personal information.

I never went further down the path than that but I'm sure the scam could evolve along the lines of "I am your one true love please wire me money to buy a plane ticket to come see you."

> How can they 'scam' people on match.com by creating fake profiles?

Getting invited to some developed country by some lonely soul. Get that person to come to their country and then drain their money. There are really guillable and desperate people out there that just stop thinking as soon as somebody fakes interest in them.

But how would Match profit? They have millions of users. What changes if they have millions and a few thousand?

Well, the only fake accounts I've come across have been advertising for other dating sites.

I was prepared to agree but I can see that it might be reasonable to expect Match to be more diligent about disallowing trying to avoid the mis-use of photos. As a simple example, the suggestion to closely watch, freeze or block domestic profiles created on international IPs. Especially in cases where content is to be used in marketing activities.

I agree that it'd be stupid for these sites to conspire with scammers, and I doubt that's what's going on... but to dismiss it because they're already making "plenty of money" definitely doesn't fly.

We've all seen people and corporations do things that are plainly stupid in the name of more profit when they're already raking it in. Never underestimate the power of greed.

> Never underestimate the power of greed.

This also applies to people filing (potentially) frivolous lawsuits against organizations they see as having deep pockets.

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