Dating Site Creates Profiles From Public Records

schliz writes "Online dating company Gotham Dating Partners has announced plans to create profiles for non-registered individuals based on publicly available information from social networking sites, e-mail registries, mailing lists, marketing surveys, government census records, real estate listings and business websites. Although the Australian Privacy Commissioner has warned that the automatic creation of identifiable profiles of individuals without their knowledge is 'not good privacy practice,' Gotham Dating Partners does not expect to face any privacy issues from the move, which is expected to boost its membership from 6.5 million to 340 million worldwide."

Comments

Easy

[sltd]

They'll just get everyone's info from Facebook!

Re:Easy

[DavidRawling]

I don't see the point. 60%+ will be married / unavailable, at a guess, 20% will not want to be contacted and 20% will be like me (fat, ugly, mean and nasty - yes, I'm just pre-populating the database). Who are they going to match with "george421@gmail.com who has a Slashdot account and isn't on Facebook"? (Sorry, if you're george421@gmail.com).

As for the response from the operator, "We don't expect to have privacy issues" - the Australian privacy commissioner is probably the better informed spokesperson in this particular case. Let's not forget "the only way to not be in the database will be to log in, confirm all your details then delete them" - who here thinks they'll respect the deletion? Anyone? "You there in seat 23596DKL were you raising your hand or scratching ... oh OK scratching it is."

Re:Easy

[rpresser]

Which leads to the question: why not just use Facebook directly? (And the alternate question: why hasn't someone tied together Facebook and a dating service yet? Seems like an obvious connection.)

http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+dating
http://www.facebook.com/zooskdating

Re:Easy

[Alumoi]

Wait, you mean FailBook isn't a dating site? I could have sworn....

Re:Easy

[Psx29]

Don't forget the 10% who are gay/lesbian and have no interest in what is most likely a heterosexually oriented dating service.

Re:Easy

[Chrisq]

Don't forget the 10% who are gay/lesbian and have no interest in what is most likely a heterosexually oriented dating service.

I think your figure is too high, it roughly corresponds to the number of people who say they have had a homosexual experience, but far exceeds the percentage who are exclusively homosexual.

Re:Easy

[somersault]

What's the difference between a "heterosexually oriented" dating service and a gay one? The ones that I've seen always ask your sex and sexual preference.

I think this practice is pretty despicable unless they make it obvious which profiles were autogenerated. If they don't do that then it could spoil the trust in a lot of relationships if someone finds out their partner is on a dating site (best friend: hey I googled your gf's name for uh.. research.. never mind, and I saw she's totally got a live account on a dating site!).

Re:Easy

[Chrisq]

Which leads to the question: why not just use Facebook directly? (And the alternate question: why hasn't someone tied together Facebook and a dating service yet? Seems like an obvious connection.)

I can't see though why anyone would use a service where 95% of the members can't respond since they aren't registered. If the goal is to increase the signal to noise ratio by finding a good match and a successful pairing then you would want to remove idle users not add them.

I tried that, but it seems that 90% of the people are in the Mafia, farmers, or zombie hunters

Re:Easy

[somersault]

If the goal is to increase the signal to noise ratio by finding a good match

That's clearly not the goal, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. It's just so they can say "we have the largest membership of any dating site! Come find your match today!" type of thing. Then the poor suckers will pay for an account, or at the very least become another pair of eyes that may for some god forsaken reason want to click on an ad. Probably for a fleshlight.

Re:Easy

[pokerdad]

I think this practice is pretty despicable unless they make it obvious which profiles were autogenerated. If they don't do that then it could spoil the trust in a lot of relationships if someone finds out their partner is on a dating site (best friend: hey I googled your gf's name for uh.. research.. never mind, and I saw she's totally got a live account on a dating site!).

I think you have stumbled on what the entire point of this service would be - denyability. If say half the profiles on the site are auto generated and half are people cheating on their spouses, then the cheaters don't have to worry nearly so much about getting caught; they can always claim that they never used the site, their profile was just auto generated. Sure it would make it a little hard to hook up with a real person, but for some this would probably be worth it.

Re:Easy

[SenseiLeNoir]

I hope it honours the "married" status......

There are SOME married people who use facebook, as a simple social network. I can imagine some poor married soul, who happens to have a "facebook profile" then gets sudden unsolicitated profile matches from this dating site, then has to explain to his/her partner....

Re:Easy

[sFurbo]

That isn't FB's fault, the people who pay for those adds have chosen to also have them shown to people who are listed as "in a relationship". Either they have overlooked that possibility, or there are money to be made from soliciting dating sites (or "dating sites", depending on the nature of the ads) to people in a relationship.

Re:Easy

[TaoPhoenix]

In Facebook America, This Page Likes You!

Re:Easy

[tibit]

If one can't explain to one's wife what has happened in this case, then perhaps one chose a wrong wife? And here I was thinking that adults in a loving relationship can talk about pretty much anything, and trust each other. Bah.

Re:Easy

[tibit]

Poor married soul indeed: what kind of a relationship he/she is in that they can't explain simple things like that...

Re:Easy

[tehcyder]

What's the difference between a "heterosexually oriented" dating service and a gay one?

A: What's the difference between a cucumber sandwich and unprotected anal sex?

B: I don't know.

A: In that case, would you like to come to tea tonight?

Re:Easy

[Chapter80]

Cool, someone's going to create a profile for me on a dating site!

I hope they let me know if I get laid.

Re:Easy

[BrokenHalo]

enjoy the rose colored glasses while they last. seriously, the myth that love exists is far better than the reality.

Well, I guess that depends on your perspective. My rose coloured glasses got stomped on decades ago, and I never did find a pair of those Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses.

But I have been married for some 25 years, and the young lust has matured into a more sedate companionship, but that doesn't mean it's not love.

But getting back to the point, my wife might be kind of amused if I suddenly started getting offers from gay men, since there was a time when we were first dating (and I was a lot skinnier than I am now), when I quite frequently got my bum pinched by gay men.

Re:Easy

[phoenix321]

This is is a serious trust issue, on how much you trust your partner or your partner trusts you. There are many shades of gray there and speaking from recent experience, there can be a particular point in time, where past events, suspicions and violations of trust accumulate in a way that even the tiniest little doubt on top of them can be the final straw that breaks the camels back.

If your partner has lied to you on N previous times and you found out, how likely will you believe they are innocent *this* time?

Re:Easy

[karlandtanya]

Ah, no, it doesn't.

First--remember that the human mind is an amazing device--it can rationalize ANYTHING. I have watched cheating husbands parade their chippies in front of the wife at family holiday meals, no less. No denial is necessary if she doesn't want to believe he's cheating. She does all the work.

Of academic interest to the problem you pose, note that the accounts are initially created using publicly available data.

Anybody with access to the same publicly available data would able to authenticate as the named person.

Again, it's plausible; prove it's impossible in every case. There--see--that's not me on that website. Now, don't wait up for me; I'll be coming home from work very late. Have to rebuild a server while everyone's out.

Ugly people date

[aronzak]

The company operates several dating sites, including: Dons and Divas, Faithful Lover, Marry Me First, Prison Hookup, and Ugly People Date

Say no more

Re:Ugly people date

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really? You think so, do you? And exactly what is it you "think so" about? The parent made two comments; one listing a number of sites the company operates, the other just saying "say no more".

If you are "thinking so" about the first, I'd love to hear your deep, intimate thoughts on a company operating several sites. But it sounds like you're unsure if they do! Don't worry, just sit there and apply your staggering logic to the situation, and you'll either magically figure out whether or not they *really* have all those sites, or you'll die of dehydration. Win/win, right?

Or, you're *thinking so* about his second statements, which means the guy said there's nothing more to say, and you made a comment specifically to say you also think nothing has to be said, which I think is technically at the lowest intellectual level possible. I mean that no matter what stupid thing any person has ever done, it only technically required stupidity as high as yours, no higher.

In either case, it was a staggering waste on so many levels. You've wasted your own time, you've wasted a small amount of the sustenance granted from whatever you last managed to cram into your maw without choking, you've brought the mechnical failure of your keyboard forward a few seconds, you've wasted power to your home to drive your computer, power to dozens more to transmit your message, you've wasted the efforts of anyone who spent time reading your comment, not to mention the extra page rendering time for anyone visiting the page, you've wasted space on Slashdot's server which will carry your meaningless drivel forever more. In essence, through thousands of tiny interactions both direct and indirect, you've brought the heat-death of the universe forward just that tiny fraction so that you can take a simple, opinionless, uncontroversial statement and make a generic, none-specific, none-commital, information-empty reply to it.

And you know what? Looking at your comment history, where you've done nothing but this (apart from that one time you linked to your own shop), I'm led to think you're actually a spam bot who's idling and building up a comment count in preparation for a blitz, which means I'm probably being even more wasteful with this post. I can only hope that someone who was thinking of making such a useless statement reads this and realises how much of an idiot they are, leaving someone with an actual opinion to make an effort instead, giving some worth to my words.

Re:Ugly people date

[ArsenneLupin]

For those too lazy to search: The Ugly Bug Ball - real dating for real people.

... and here's their rationale:

1. Half of daters aren't pretty so instead of fishing in a small pool of prettiness and getting nowhere dive into an ocean of uglies and have more choice
2. Ugly people are a better calibre of human - pretty people generally aren't very nice and tend to be a bit shallow
3. Ugly people have had a tougher life and therefore tend to be more considerate and more loyal. A recent TUBB survey also proved that they try harder in bed.
4. Once with an ugly partner it is unlikely that anyone will try and take them from you meaning you can let yourself go completely once you're together.
5. In these straightened times TUBB is cheaper as a) We don't charge much as the pretty sites and b) Ugly people have lower expectations - for a first date A Family Bucket will usually do the trick.

   Hehe, ... try harder in bed ... family bucket...

Re:Ugly people date

[somersault]

What about for those that don't want to let themselves go? Urgh. Once I realised I was past the teenage "eat whatever the hell you want" phase and was heading towards being overweight, I corrected it by learning how to eat right, and getting more regular exercise, and now I'm in better shape than most guys. As someone who grew up feeling pretty ugly, it's nice to now feel at least average and get the occasional admiring look or compliment :p

Plus, I'd rather only date people that have a little self respect and care about being healthy. That makes a person more attractive to me.

Re:Ugly people date

[AmiMoJo]

This highlights one of the biggest problems with dating web site: too much emphasis on the photo.

Most of the people I have ever seriously liked have been fairly average looking. Not ugly, just average. I liked them because of who they were, not because their good looks made me horny and want to sleep with them. Anyway, I find I start to see the beauty in women as I get to know them and their mannerisms. You can't see that in a photo, and usually the resolution is so low you can't see if they have nice eyes or a really honest smile.

The descriptions people write never really tell you much and all read pretty much the same anyway, so you have nothing more to go on than the profile photo. At least with Facebook you can see what sort of friends they have, what sort of things they do for recreation, what types of movies and books they like etc. Facebook tends to be more honest too because people are just sharing with their friends who already know what they are like rather than trying to write a dating site profile that will get them an attractive and rich partner.

Re:Ugly people date

[Chemisor]

> Half of daters aren't pretty so instead of fishing in a small pool of prettiness and getting nowhere dive into an ocean of uglies and have more choice

If I wanted to lower my standards that much, I could visit the local bar. It is not hard to find single ugly women; no dating site is needed for that.

> Ugly people are a better calibre of human - pretty people generally aren't very nice and tend to be a bit shallow
> Ugly people have had a tougher life and therefore tend to be more considerate and more loyal.

In my experience ugly people are much worse caliber of human. They've had a tougher life and ended up mean and bitter. And while there are a very few ugly women out there who turned to learning things, most just mope around the house and complain to their ugly friends about how shallow men are.

> A recent TUBB survey also proved that they try harder in bed.

Anybody who hasn't been laid in years would try hard in bed. At least the first time.

> Once with an ugly partner it is unlikely that anyone will try and take them from you meaning you can let yourself go completely once you're together.

That's true. If you have something nobody wants, you can easily keep it. And then yourself become something nobody wants.

> In these straightened times TUBB is cheaper as a) We don't charge much as the pretty sites and

All dating sites worth visiting are free.

> b) Ugly people have lower expectations - for a first date

Fair enough. If you're ugly and have low expectation, TUBB is the site for you. The rest of us still have some self-respect left.

Re:Ugly people date

[JunkmanUK]

I've met a fair share of women who are very aware of their 'beauty' and all too often they've been absolutely appalling creatures. On the flip side, I've also met some trolls with chips on their shoulder who, if they shed their personal issues, wouldn't be that bad at all really.

I guess it's best to stick on the average and meet the happy people who really aren't too fussed about being seen without makeup, but aren't too lazy to walk down the road to the shop :)

Privacy

[TaoPhoenix]

How does a company "not expect to face privacy issues"?

Re:Privacy

[thegarbz]

There's a world of difference between my Facebook profile being viewable and being associated and listed as single on a dating site. The difference is purpose of website and intent of visitors. If someone wants to trawl through thousands of public facebook accounts looking for single people then so be it. It's quite another to be expressly listed on a search engine designed for such a thing. An extreme example is where your phone number is publicly listed in the phone book may be of no concern to you. Would you feel the same way if it was posted on 4chan along with messages of "Let's make this guy's life hell?"

I'm waiting for the moment this company gets sued because without anyone's consent they built a profile which turned out to be not favorable based on automated / wrong information.

I know I know, public information is public information. However in my country a "reasonable expectation" rule applies to such things. An example is if you're in a restaurant (publicly accessible place), but you're sitting in the far corner alone not engaging anyone you have a legally granted reasonable expectation of privacy, and I don't think a reasonable person would expect their phone number to end up on a dating site without consent, even if it is listed in the phone book.

Re:Privacy

[thegarbz]

That it is not my friend. The onus is on the buyer to ensure the legality. It's perfectly legal for facebook to sell my data provided I consented to it. But then let's look again at the reasonable person line. I find it perfectly reasonable to have my information sold to third parties for marketing purposes, after all I consented to it. I did not consent to signing up to a public dating service. The key difference here is my information used for internal purposes vs republished in a different (and in this case potentially damaging) light.

A real world example would be taking a photo of a person in public. Perfectly legal. Selling that photo of that person with neither their permission, consent or even against their wishes, also perfectly legal. The buyer of said photo then publishing it somewhere like on their website without consent of the original party, illegal. Commercial use of a lot of public information is illegal without the express permission of the original owner, unfortunately this often varies on a case by case basis.

Facebook is perfectly within their right to sell the data. I have consented to that. The Dating site is within their right to own the data they bought, they purchased it. They are NOT within their right to republish that data or even use my name or any of my details for commercial gain without my permission.

Not interested.

[dangitman]

Online dating company Gotham Dating Partners...

How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not interested in dating Batman? What a goddamn passive-aggressive slut.

Re:Not interested.

[antifoidulus]

Let me guess, your heart belongs to Bruce Wayne and only Bruce Wayne?

Membership?

[a.koepke]

Can they really claim someone is a "member" of the site if that person hasn't even heard of the site before?

If they decide to do this there should be some marker on that profile to say it has been created from public information obtained without that person's consent or knowledge.

There also needs to be some way to allow you to verify your identity and take ownership of the profile they have setup for you which should include the option to remove your profile.

Dating site scams

[Anonymous Coward]

Lonely men on these sites can now look forward to receiving more 'winks' from hot 19 year old co-eds (who aren't actually members or interested) urging them to 'upgrade their membership' (pay money) in order to reply to them.

Anyone signing up to these sites should check the Ts&Cs very carefully. My favourite is Ashley Madison's:

From time to time this service may include, offer, or initiate winks, collect messages or instant chat from Market Researchers (Online Hosts) simulating attached or single men or women. These efforts are conducted for market research and/or customer experience and/or quality control and/or compliance purposes. Market research information is used to provide analysis, feedback, trends, patterns, social commentary and information in the aggregate and aides in the process of monitoring our system for compliance of our operating standards and code of conduct. Accordingly, Market Researchers (Online Hosts) will NOT be conspicuously identified.

Any male signing up, can expect to be contacted by some impossibly hot young thing, within hours of sign-up.

Re:Dating site scams

[Fnkmaster]

Lately, that's not so far off from what Facebook has been like. I get a constant barrage of fake/fraudulent friend requests (in recent weeks, at least 1-2 a day) from clearly fake accounts set up solely for data phishing/market research/stealing my private information. At least I can only assume those are their motives, since they sure as hell don't want to be my friends.

Boost membership?

[MavEtJu]

Now run this by me again...

How does
create profiles for non-registered individuals based on publicly available information

result into
which is expected to boost its membership from 6.5 million to 340 million worldwide.

?

Re:Boost membership?

[pieterh]

... is expected to boost its "membership" from 6.5 million...

Hope that helps. The goal is not to sell dating services, the goal is to attract men with lonely penis syndrome, and sell them useless services. A larger "membership", which presumably will be principally profiles of women naive enough to leave their FB profiles open, will attract more LPS men, and generate more money.

Here's how it works. You have LPS, you go to this site, make a search. The site convincingly shows you dozens of matching profiles (with photos!) Now if you upgrade to a minimum membership you can message, wink, or chat with some of these lovelies.

Except they're not there.

Dating site or spying center?

[mcvos]

When I read the summary, I thought they were going to create the most useless dating site ever. Where many commercial dating sites already have the problem that the vast majority of your matches will be unable to respond, here the vast majority of your matches wouldn't even be interested in dating, and would consider your attempts to contact them spam.

TFA sounds more like they want to provide a service for people and companies to collect information on people (prospective employees?), while the official cover story is that they want to check the accuracy of their dating profiles (but then why would they need millions of other profiles too?).

I wonder how the shoe fits ...

[MartinSchou]

From the article:

[The company's marketing vice president Damon] Jordan did not expect to face any privacy issues by aggregating publicly available information, stating: "If the information is public, there are no privacy issues."

That's an interesting stance from such a public figure. I really hope no one will try to aggregate every piece of publicly available information about this particular person and post it in a single, easy to use post/thread.

Personally I'd consider it a rather large violation, but hey - to each their own, right?

dear slashdot, don't post professional trolls

[Nyall]

How about we not give these clowns free publicity for spouting nonsense ?

This isn't any different than the ryan airlines CEO make press releases about only needing one pilot.

libel and slander

[epine]

It's not just a matter of privacy. Repeating false information about a person runs foul of libel and slander.

The credit rating agencies have some kind of weird exemption under law from being sued under libel or slander. So if a creditor gives a credit agency false information about your payment history, it's a huge ordeal to get this expunged, and meanwhile you can't sue the credit rating agency for broadcasting what would be a libellous falsehood in any other context.

These people, not so lucky.

I don't think the credit rating agencies want to see big issues surrounding libel and slander challenged in court. They have it good. Hardly anyone ever points out their cozy loophole. Either they'll choose to prop up the legitimacy of these fringe collators, or they'll be distributing severed horse heads to make them go away.

Re:Libel potential

[Jeprey]

Not the non-member 3rd suing themselves - that's stupid. But rather by scraping from other sources and then claiming it represents a non-member 3rd party, if there are errors that cause damage it's most definitely actionable under common law libel/slander. The non-member 3rd can sue this firm. This firm has to be responsible for accuracy of their collated and created database. It's a derivative work on public information but they are adding to it by systematizing it into usable form for their members.

Customary XKCD.

[VortexCortex]

http://xkcd.com/713/

I felt obliged to post an XKCD link -- as it is our custom.

Re:Lawyers love this

[Chrisq]

The lawyers will be all over this. It should be easy money for them. The company isn't thinking this through. Even if they aren't breaking the law, their lawsuit costs will be huge.

Yes, if my wife finds that I am registered on a dating site they will be accessory to murder!

They'll have a dating profile for Charles Manson

[tomhudson]

After all, his info is on the web.

And the goatse guy and tubgirl.

And LOTS of dead people. Anyone want to date a zombie?

Re:Legality?

[Aeternitas827]

Silly poster, Google Street View can't set a president for anything; a precedent, perhaps...but I think we're getting a bit into apples and oranges here (or, at least, Red Delicious and Granny Smith). While Google went about collecting (wittingly or unwittingly) anything they could get, they weren't out to identify specific people, nor does it seem their intent was to collect the (personal) data for specific use in their site/marketing/etc. These blokes, however, are crawling for whatever personally identifiable data they can get with the express intent of marketing these people for the purposes of making their site more attractive to potential users/clients--their marketing ploy, really.

In the end, it could really backfire, as it seems pretty certain that they're going to run into users who (to themselves) inexplicably already exist on the site, without having registered previously, and start to smell that something's up.

In other news:

[denzacar]

Thousands of divorce lawyers were hospitalized in USA's greatest epidemic of continuous orgasms.

Re:They'll have a dating profile for Charles Manso

[gstoddart]

And LOTS of dead people. Anyone want to date a zombie?

Well, it would mean that someone is dating me for my BRAINZ!!

Sorry, I just couldn't resist that one. ;-)

Why?

[denzacar]

Why would an auto-generated use of your personal data without your explicit permission be any different from your "regular" identity theft just because it is done "wholesale" by a corporation?
Explicit declaration on their part or not.

Shouting "Stand and deliver!" or "Your money or your life!" doesn't turn a robbery into a donation.

Re:Why?

[John Hasler]

Why would an auto-generated use of your personal data without your explicit permission be any different from your "regular" identity theft...

Where is the fraud? Are they claiming to be you? Are they taking out loans in your name? How is collecting a bunch of public information about you in one place any kind of "theft"?

What sort of "profile" do I really have?

[mark-t]

I've actually often wondered about this... that is, what sort of general conclusions could one come to about me based on publicly available information? I've googled myself before and most of what I've found reflects some of my interests, but I really don't know what sort of generalization one could make about me based on that.

All I can see, in general that one could conclude about me is that I like Lego, programming, role playing games, and appear to take an active interest in the issues surrounding copyright law and copyright reform. What would that *really* tell anybody about me, however?

I am inclined to conclude that the publicly available information probably amounts to considerably more than a google search, because I certainly don't see how what I find with google would really tell anybody anything that's actually useful for people I do not know to know about me unless they actually wanted to engage me in a conversation.