Slashdot Mirror
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."
What's being described here is already covered by existing fraud statutes, isn't it? What's with the call for more regulation?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The little heading under the title should sum it up, plain and simple: it's from the "you-mean-i-shouldn't-believe-everything-i-read dept." Do a little homework, and think things through. Common sense... the world is losing it all too fast in my opinion. Being uneducated is one thing, and not a bad thing, but is this what we're coming to? People make their own decisions without doing any homework and stubbornly stick to that no matter what? :\
Whatever, me just blowing off steam I guess...
Reminds me of the proposition 2 crap that happened down here in Texas. While us citizens were busy screaming about adding proposition 2 to the Texas constitution (it would ban gay marraige), despite the fact that gay marriage was already illegal under state law, our loving congress and our wonderful governor Rick Perry slipped by some amendments that allowed them to spend the principle of the education budget (normally legislature can only spend the interest on things other than education) to give Wal-Mart a multi-million dollar loan to build a distribution center in south texas.
And to think there is still no budget for the public school system down here (we've been bickering about it since our supreme court struck down the curring Robin Hood system about... 1, 2 years ago?)
http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/godsdebris/
Who would want to date when you can play Dungeons and Dragons?
Anyway, doesn't everyone here know that all the cute pictures online are fake and you are talking to somebody who weighs 300 pounds and whose real name is "Bubba"?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
His Qualities
Your Qualities
More useless hype to distract you from the real world.
after reading the title, and skimming the summary, i read "14 comments yro.slashdot.org" as "14 yr old.slashdot.org"
for a minute there, i lost myself...
Back in February, I consulted with a law firm on a dating site fraud case.
3 0813.asp) and the case was dropped. I can see
The client sued a dating site because he saw a profile (faked), joined, chatted for 2 hours,
then "she" gave him a get lost jerk phone number.
In discovery, the email address given by this "woman" was phony.
While the dating site is protected under the CDA (see http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2003/200
a case against a site for failing to do a basic check of the email address and removal of a phony profile. That by not checking, the dating site gets an unfair benefit from the deceptive information posted -- a person being tricked into paying a fee to contact the person in the fake profile.
Fight Spammers!
That way I can be sure that I am corresponding with a virgin who just turned 18.
Here is a noble idea:
Let the free market figure it out!
For example, if Yahoo dating service is able to block 98% of scammers, while Match.com is only able to block 75%, then who should win?
The answer lies within filtering technology, and innovating approaches to improving the quality of service. The market will sort things out on its own; that will force innovation (progress) and foster competition.
Regulation and legislation usually stifles competition and innovation. If people can't get good service at one place, they will go to somewhere else that meets their needs. That is called the free market!
Libertas in infinitum
Wise, benevolent legislator seeks voter to guard and protect. Will keep you safe from all harm. My turnons are exotic travel, tax hikes and campaign contributions. LTR preferred.
Welcome to the Internet, where men are men, women are men, and 16 year old girls are FBI agents.
(Paraphrased)
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?
now women are starting to get bit.
That's the fastest way to get Congress to act on something: show that it affects women as well as men.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I have heard of plenty of people who left their wives/husbands and kids for some "perfect soulmate" they met online.
I actually know one putz who did exactly that. Dumped his wife after about thirty years of marriage, and now he complains that her family doesn't invite him to family gatherings.
Of course, there were always the people who'd run off with a secretary or something like that. All the net does is allow them a larger pool of homewreckers to scan for.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I want to see regulation against using photos that were clearly taken BEFORE YOU STARTED EATING LARD BETWEEN MEALS!
The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 has the following requirements
on websites that bring American men and foreign women together:
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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This really is a noble idea, but like many such ideas, it is far too simple to work all by itself. There is nothing inherently wrong with regulation; it's just mindful engineering. Many systems, if you don't apply intelligence and sculpting to their growth progress, will just end up being wild free-for-alls which do not necessarily favor humans. This is why farmers try to discourage weed growth among their crops. Our intelligence is a tool designed to give us an edge in the wild; ignoring it needlessly strips us of that advantage. Sorry, but I don't have claws and fur, so why on earth would I want to handicap myself?
--I remember while visiting Orlando, and Buffalo and a few other U.S. cities, and being amazed at the apparent lack of zoning laws. The cities were a total mess. Industry and housing and retail sectors were all mixed together. I saw nasty chemical plants next to schools, next to gun shops, next to more housing, next to burned out housing. . . It was insane and stressful and totally unnecessary. --Yes, it made the ideologues happy because some high-minded theory about evolution or something was being adhered to, but the result were stupid cities which were uncomfortable and stressful to live in.
Humans have the ability to measure the effectiveness of systems and employ tactics to increase efficiency. --Yes, free market economies are a good base-line for allowing natural efficiencies to take hold, but so are implementing required standards, -for example, the the legally imposed engineering standards placed on boiler manufacture during the steam age when faulty or stupidly made engines exploded on a regular basis. --The free market may have in time have come around to building safe boilers all on its own, but things got a lot safer for the populace almost immediately when the public decided to make it illegal for companies to build lethal steam-bombs masquerading as engines.
Free market economics is one tool, and while it sometimes works, as with all tools, it also sometimes fails miserably. Why get upset when other tools are suggested? You can't solve every problem with a hammer. Sometimes a drill, or a screwdriver, or a piece of sandpaper are better fits for a problem. More often than not, all the tools used in concert in an intelligent manner turn out the best results.
I for one am glad that bridge designs need to meet certain critical standards before cars are allowed to cross and that we don't have to wait around for the stupid companies to be weeded out through economic failure due to their bridges collapsing some percentage of the time.
Of course, it is true that regulation through government bodies can and does also cause big problems, but those problems stem from stupidity and greed rather than an inherent flaw in the style of solution. Regulation can stifle creativity, but the Free Market model allows for unnecessary dangers to the population. Human Intelligence is the stuff we use to balance out the difference.
-FL
In my experience when internet dating potential partners have only two of the following three qualities: Attractive
Single
Mentally stable
I use dating sites. I do not want regulation of content on them. Stay the fuck out of my life. I will decide whether somebody is a fake, whether the site is putting up garbage, etc. (and it's not *that* difficult).
Go back to your home towns and find a school's bake sale to help run. Stop legislating your way into every goddamn nook and cranny of everybody's lives. While you're at it, how about repealing some other regulations, since you've already gone too far?
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
I have lots of girl/friends and I have met a number of women from using the Yahoo, Match.com, and eHarmony personals. Generally, what I have found is that the women who are on internet personals (and are legit) are there for a reason.
... with the average women saying they are average and actually being overweight.
... I published a story on my BLOG back in March that all of my friends have been begging me to write down for years. If, after reading it, you don't think there should be regulation of these sites ... well ... let's just say ...Maybe we should have YOU investigated and regulated.
Women most often lie about weight
Men, it seems, most often lie about being married.
If you want to read the worst internet date ever
The Worst Date Ever For An Apple Tech
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Ok which senator got scammed by some fat ugly gay man pretending to be a shy 18 year old virgin chick?
You know that's probably the reason this bill is being introduced.
eTrade SUCKS
Perhaps the mail order bride legislation should reflect it. In a CBS news article on the subject, Natasha Spivak, founder of Encounters International, a Bethesda, Maryland-based service, said she had "no objection to mandatory background checks", but felt it would not totally prevent abusive from getting a foreign wife. O n the other hand, she contended that, "male clients, not the women, are the most likely to be victimized in mail-order marriages. Some women, she said, enter such marriages solely to gain U.S. citizenship, then falsely complain of physical abuse as a ploy to remain in America despite divorce. Some of these women are sharks". Although the legislation is promoted with the noblest of intentions (to get votes), it's unlikely to make any great impact. Let the buyer beware!
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.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
The largest scale expression of something very close to the Libertariani ideal was Hong Kong and it performed outstandingly under that system, until the return to Chinese control.
So I think there's a reasonable example that libertarianism can work well.
I think it's a good idea for government to handle things that are truly public goods, like roads, because it is just too burdensome to pay every time you drive somewhere.
But I'd love all schools to be private. I think there would be much higher quality education overall if that was the case. Parents who have to pay feel they have some control and "skin in the game", which is not true of today's public schools. Before public schools this was still a very well-educated country, because parents as a general rule are willing to sacrifice for their kids and pay.
D
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.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Actually, I find it somewhat interesting and amusing that people take such a negative stance on "Internet dating". The types of fraud this legislation is concerned with are obvious scams, much like the Nigerian email scams circulating the net. Either you've got supposed foreign women looking for a guy in the U.S. (usually someone so new to a dating site that their profile and description hasn't even been approved yet by the moderators), and they immediately "fall in love" with you after 1 or 2 emails -- or you've got cookie-cutter template "dating sites" that mysteriously happen to have hundreds of photos of extremely attractive women in your zip code or city, and you can't email any of them until you pay a $40 or more monthly "subscription fee".
If you exercise a little common sense and caution, you should be able to avoid being taken by any of these schemes. In my opinion, they do practically nothing to invalidate the concept itself of net dating.
Going back to the "common sense" thing again, of course people want to believe they've met the "perfect" person for them online when they start chatting it up with someone new. The sensible people arrange to meet in person as soon as it's reasonably possible, and find out if the photos are old/fake or not, etc. If they're not honest in their personals ad, then you can bet they're not going to be honest and straightforward with other things either. So cut things off right there and move on!
Done sensibly, I don't see why Internet dating should be any less "useful" than any other form of dating. I know one of my "requirements" for a partner is someone intelligent and educated enough to enjoy doing a little bit of reading and writing. The people who can't put together a complete sentence (or who hate reading) don't typically bother with (or fare well at making ads on) Internet personals sites, so voila - some "pre-screening" is done for me!
The reason the immigration grenade went off in the collective hands of the Republican party, is because the half of them that thought toughening up the laws would make a good campaign issue, evidently didn't consult the other half, who were all funding their campaigns with dollars donated by the agribusiness or construction lobbies. Oops.
Grenades work better when you can agree which direction you're going to throw it in before you pull the pin.
On the bright side, it made it abundantly clear who was actually listening to their constituency and who was listening to their donors, though. It's good to get an issue every once in a while that clarifies things like that.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
That is a valid argument for allowing schools to kick out very troubled students. Jeffery Canada (prominent educator and author of "Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun") once said that if he could kick out just a few kids (less than 10), he could have changed the whole dynamic of his violent inner city school.
The problem with the libertarian approach is simply that the school isn't making the decision whether the child goes to school - the parent is making that decision. There are a lot of very good children that come from poor/bad homes. There are lots of successful adults who had parents who were complete losers. There are parents who would choose not to send their kids to school just to be mean to them. Under the current system, these kids sometimes do well in school (or even just "OK"), and they can make it through and eventually do something worthwhile with their lives.
I just enrolled my daughter into private school for next year. It is affordable for me, but I can easily imagine parents who wouldn't be willing to make any sacrifice for their kids. I used to have neighbors who never had food in the house, never provided decent clothes for their kids, made them sleep on the floor because they were constantly having pot parties. They didn't give two shits about either of their two children, but they had a $10,000 wide screen TV that they went heavily in debt to buy. I could easily picture these kids being turned out onto the street during the day in a libertarian society. As it was, they were in the school, didn't cause trouble in school (they LIKED school - HATED being at home), and while they weren't on the Honor Roll, they weren't flunking out either.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
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.
Our law is based on the Common Law of old England, which originally came from the church. A judge who respects judicial history and continuity will obviously rule that marriage is defined in the Common Law as the union of one man with one woman. Anything else is legislating from the bench.
And if you actually knew anything about the subject you're spouting insane nonsense about you wouldn't have wasted those electrons.
The fundamental difference that set America apart from England and all other countries is the separation of Church and State. England has a state church, we don't. Out laws are not based in any way whatsoever on any sort of religious beliefs. That's what made us so cool back in the day.
So now, we have these extremist fundamentalist nutjobs shoving this historical revisionism asshattery because they're too cowardly to deal with a free society.
If you want to live in a theocracy, move the Saudi Arabia. That's where they live under your desired system.
If you choose not to do so, think about why exactly that is and quit trying to bring that diseased type of system here.
Why would it have to secede? As far as I can tell it's usually the state legislatures that have too much free time to micomanage every little thing, and you could just make them exempt from certain Federal policies.
How about having groups of current laws expire unless re-ratified? You pick a bunch of laws (haven't got this part worked out yet) set a time limit (so that there will only be enough time for the most important ones) and pray. Not perfect, but I'm toying with it.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
There are basically two fundamentally different things that could have happened there:
1. That the site itself created false profiles to seem populated. That's fraud.
2. That some member put in a false address on their own profile just because they _don't_ want to be stalked, spammed, or have their identity stolen for character assassination purposes as retaliation by some cretin who can't deal with rejection. This is just having a brain. The sheer number of idiots out there is truly frightening, and these sites _also_ act like the wrong kind of a filter by mainly attracting those who are too socially-retarded to find a date any other way. So anyone who put any true personal info on a site that'll give it unquestioningly to every horny Tom, Dick and Harry, I'd consider them genuinely and truly retarded.
So is it some guy that was scammed by the site owners, _or_ some socially-retarded guy who's angered that he can't stalk the girl who dared refuse him? They're very very different cases. So as long as we aren't told which of them it is, I won't hurry to join in the angry mob with torches and pitchforks.
In fact, the way the original post was phrased, it sounded like getting a false email was _the_ grand fraud. Not even "proof" of fraud, but as being the grand despicable act of deception itself. That the site should have made sure the guy only gets genuine email addresses for his money.
In which case, I'm left scratching my head: exactly what the fuck was he actually expecting to get on that site? Did he think he was buying a list of verified email addresses, like on some spammers' sites? Or what? The site only promised to put him in contact with another person, nothing more. As long as they did that (or at least he can't prove that they didn't), it seems to me like they're perfectly in the clear. They didn't promise to sell him someone's verified personal data.
On the whole, it looks more and more like an idiot who can't deal with rejection than anything else. Read the whole thing again. Starting with the whole flipping out and trying to sue the site after the very first rejection. There is no mention of trying to gather more proof or anything. (E.g., you know, trying to chat to more than one person just to see if all conversations follow the same bait-and-dump script or what. Or trying to see if more people run into the same kind of a problem. Surely he's not the only one who talked to a staff member in disguise, if that's the case.) And continuing with the not-so-veiled quotes all over the place ("she", "woman", etc) implying that it must have been a guy, although, again, there was no finding or even an actual case.
Seriously, the more I look at it, the more it looks like a very good possibility that it's just a clown who'd do anything rather than admit that someone rejected him. He's scream fraud, he'll scream that it must have been a man in disguise, anyting. Because god forbid admitting that maybe, just maybe, a woman could have actually rejected him.
Of course, I can't know that either, but it's a distinct possibility.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Here is an experiment you can do in the comfort of your own home. It won't work with any of the established "serious" dating sites liek yahoo, Match.com, eHarmony... but try it with one of the newer, agressively marketted sites, like... i don't know... true.com, basically any place that does not allow you to reply to "winks" with a self-written email unless you pay will work:
1. Create a free profile. Do not accept the offer for a "free trial period", just join, put in your age and city, etc. Fill out as much of the rest of the form as you like, but to get the most out of this experiment, I recommend that you do not upload a photo.
2. Wait.
3. After about a week, you will start getting "winks" or "smiles" or whatever they call them on your chosen website. They will all be from women at or near the minimum age you put in your "who I'm looking for" criteria, they will have cute but not unbelievable pictures, and may or may not have their profile information filled out. Occasionally, despite not having your own picture uploaded, you will get a wink that says, "I liked your photo" or something similar.
In order to reply to these "winks", you have to join the site. Sound fishy?
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
What would you call a slightly larger (yet still small in proportion to the population) body that attempts to legislate against someone making a very personal medical decision. I think most would call that tyranny.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
-Ninth Ammendment to the Constitution
Just because the founding fathers didn't list medical privacy as a right, doesn't mean that it isn't a fundamental right in our society. For the government to intrude into medicine when neither party wishes it is clearly overstepping any reasonable bounds.
Most people in this country don't want legalized gay marriage. Most people don't wish to live in that kind of society. The "extremist fundamentalists" are the majority of adults in this country, their viewpoint is extreme only in relation to the that of the relatively small number of urban liberal elites who are attempting to re-engineer society to their liking. You may not like that fact, but it's the inconvenient truth. Good luck convincing such people that you're "setting them free" by corrupting and spitting on their fundamental moral values.
And you've fallen into the trap of thinking that the constitution is designed to *give* rights.
What you and your morally bankrupt ilk always fail to do is come up with one possible constitutional justification for allowing such a ban.
I know your type doesn't want to live in that type of society. The real problem is that "that type of society" is one in which people are allowed to live their lives in their own way wthout extremist religious zealots sticking their noses in other people's business. This is known as a "free society" and I'm well aware of your hatred and contempt for it.
People like you, in fact, are the reason we are not a democracy and that we have a separation of Church and State.
The fact is that the constitution and bill of rights exist to tell you to fuck off or leave if you don't want to live in that sort of society.
If you'ree too cowardly to live in a free society then move to saudi Arabia where thay already live under your ideal system.