Fraud in Internet Dating Prompting Regulation

anaesthetica writes "According to the Washington Post, an increasing tide of fraud in internet dating is prompting lawyers and lawmakers to examine possible regulations and consumer protections. Wire fraud scamming, plane ticket ripoffs, fraud perpetrated to fund trysts, fake "date bait" messages -- these are just a few of the issues the courts are beginning to deal with. Dating websites were immunized from lawsuits over false statements by the recent Communications Decency Act. Other attempts to regulate internet dating, such as the 2005 'mail-order bride' legislation, are already being challenged in court, but an increasing number of states are sponsoring their own legislation."

Comments

blah blah election year nothing to see here!

[plasmacutter]

existing anti-sexual assault, anti-fraud, anti- laws more than cover this.

this is yet another potential grand stand style red herring politicians can use to distract you from real issues.

I hope I saved you a lot of time you would have spent inquiring further into this.

My view as an international matchmaker

[asiansweetheart]

Let me offer my view on this, the view of the owner of an international matchmaking site http://www.asiansweetheart.net/. I introduce Thai ladies to western men through my website. I have a small membership mostly because it is so much work to recruit good ladies. On the other hand, scammers are very active. In fact, one of the biggest scams in Thailand is the army of bar girls (that's what prostitutes are called here) that spend the afternoons sending love spam to all their previous customers after they return to the west after their vacations in the Land of Smiles. Those love spammers are often very organized, keeping careful notes on which guy they asked for how much money for whatever emergency (mother sick, motorcycle broken, buffalo died, etc., etc.). They also have plenty of profiles posted on the free dating sites. So although the profiles are not really fake, their sole purpose is scamming. And they are quite successful, receiving loads of cash each month from soft-hearted suckers in the west.

The problem here in Thailand is not that most Thai girls are bad. It is that most are so nice, and shy, and not very open about showing their photo on the internet, or too shy to actually make contact with a foreigner even if they really want to. The scammers are a small but aggressive and active fraction of the population. So the scammers end up being a large fraction of the Thai ladies meet-able online.

The typical westerner vacationing in Thailand cannot easily tell the difference from a nice local girl and a scammer. But I can spot them instantly as can every other Thai person.

But even without local knowledge the average foreigner can just use their head a little. When that sweet little thing you met online starts asking for money, or plane tickets, or other big ticket items then it is pretty obvious you are being scammed, isn't it? What's the point of yet more legislation?

IMBRA was a MAJOR fuck-up

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

As mentioned in the summary - the first attempt at legislation along these lines is being challenged in court because it was, well, absolutely idiotic and probably completely unconstitutional.

The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 has the following requirements
on websites that bring American men and foreign women together:

1. Gather mandatory background information and documents on the American client's past criminal history.
   
2. Provide the man's background information to any woman who has correspondence with an American through their site.
   
3. Check the National Sex Offender public registry and state public registry for each U.S client.
   
4. Secure a signed, written consent from the lady before releasing her contact information to the American client interested in her.
   
5. Provide her a brochure (created by our government) to explain her U.S. rights to her.
   

Some of those requirements are reasonable - but (1) and (2) are absolutely nuts. Simply chatting with, or even sending a simple note to, a woman means that a guy has to give out way more information than he would ever give out to a woman he just met in a bar or other similar 'dating' situation.

The background information includes things like details of part marriages, names and ages of any children, his current address and full name, etc. The kind of information that fraudsters and identity thieves would just love to get their hands on.

Furthermore, there is no recriprocation - the woman are under no obligation to provide any verifiable information at all to the men.

The law goes so far as to try to impose itself on all 'international' dating websites, even if the ownership is 100% non-American and are hosted outside of the US. The enforcement mechanism is to deny marriage visas to any woman who admits to meeting her American husband or husband-to-be through a website that has not officially adopted the rules and been certified by some sort of quasi-governmental certification authority.

Unfortunately, it really doesn't help all the honest Joes out there that most of the websites that discuss the IMBRA are laden with misogyny, using terms like "feminazi" that are really self-labels for the writers as probably not being fit to marry a woman - American or otherwise.

Immigration is mostly an example of the same

[ianscot]

rather than issues like balancing the budget, fixing levees, or fixing the immigration problems we have.

Immigration sticks out as the crossover from your list. Pretty clearly the Repubs were trying to pony up immigration reform as this year's Gay Marriage Amendment: the social wedge issue that would continue to let them play Nixon's "southern strategy" this time around. The "illegal immigration should be a felony" thing was all about that. The grenade went off in their hands a bit, and now they're back to the gay marriage thing as a fallback position.

My Southern Baptist relatives down in Oklahoma would vote for any politician who passed legislation about some sort of "fraud" involving white girls being misled by black men. Seriously. All you have to do is throw them a bone like that, and they're motivated. Politicians know it, just take a look at their Senator Coburn. It's spooky.

Re:Libertarianism

[HungWeiLo]

I'm sure someone will call you on your bluff sooner or later, so it might as well be me.

As a Hong Kong native, I have enjoyed multitudes of social services, including free health care, free public schools (K-12, although you buy your own cheap textbooks), the best public transportation system in the world, parents with unspeakably generous government pension benefits, you name it.

Here's the grand slam - My Father-in-law got a all-expense-paid 14-day trip to Europe as a 20-year-anniversary present from his employer - the Hong Kong government; Imagine something like that in the States.

All this happened during the colonial administration, and is still going on today without too many drastic changes under Chinese administration (well, except they've actually scaled down the government employee benefits, if you can believe it).

So Hong Kong is hardly a shiny example of a libertarian paradise. It can provide social services despite the low taxes it levies (15% flat tax last I remember) because it is flush with money from being one of the great financial centers in Asia.

college doesn't count

[BitterAndDrunk]

College is so unlike the real world it should be removed from any gross generalizations, unless they're strictly about college students.

I didn't online date in college either; it's damned easy to meet people and the shared experience makes the whole "dating game" trivial.

But it's still happening online - not with formal dating services but Facebook, and (for younger) MySpace and its amalgams are how many people are meeting at this point.

Re:Libertarianism

[Miaowara_Tomokato]

Frequently the disruptors are students that are being taught too far above or below their actual educational level. Bored kids who know the stuff already will act out in a disruptive manner, and frustrated kids who aren't getting it will do the same. It's very rare that a child is bound and determined not to learn through their entire school experience. If they are not engaged at the proper level, they will eventually come to view the system as a failure (and probably not be entirely wrong).

The issue isn't public vs. private schools - it's an ingrained dependence on the Carnegie school system which is designed to pump out factory workers. 'Grade levels' are a convenient (but artificial) way to sort students out by age, but all students are not capable of learning the same things at the same age.

A private school that recognizes this and teaches to appropriate educational standards could be wildly successful. Unfortunately, in public schools, advancing students is just as much a political issue between parents and the school ["Johnny's repeating the 10th grade? Expect a call from our lawyer."]. If one early step in education fails, then a student will be behind for the rest of their educational career. Why bother trying to teach the multiplication of fractions to a student who has not yet grasped the basics of multiplication, or fractions?

So in short, I agree with you that private schools may be the way forward, but for different reasons which I hope everyone will consider.

Re:I consulted on a case of this.

[abb3w]

do a test, create an account on their site, but don't put ANY personal information, bare minimum.. wait a week and check how many flirts you get from women..

As a control, you can also create the profile for "Ima Lyon-Bastard", or similar.

I can't remember which sites I tested it on, but I signed up for about a dozen free memberships using a disposable Dodgeit.com mail drop, and created a profile accurate about age and location — but used a poverty-line income, the psychological profile of a sociopath ("Hobbies: torturing puppies, kittens, and bunnies"), and repeated notes on the lines of "This is a bogus profile; no contacts will be acknowleged or responded to". One site killed the account inside 3 days, and one let it just sit there.... but I got a couple dozen "enthusiastic" flirting responses apiece within a week from all of the others.

I doubt section 230 immunity stretches to covering cases where an employee of the dating service is responsible for the shell script creating the responses....