Fake user profiles should be exposed! For example, a user  on OkCupid who recently (up until a few days ago) used a fake photograph of an attractive woman in order to lure innocent and trusting men to her. I was one of her victims. she is still active on this site, and still won't use her own photo!! Ladies and gents - watch out for charlatans. They lurk everywhere. ID verification should be standard across the board.

Some sites create fake profiles although the membership and everything there is free of charge. I don't understand why are they doing it.

The reason dating sites are making fake profiles ia because apparently there is this unofficial online dating rule that sending a girl a kiss or wink shows that you lack confidence and guys are encouraged to make direct contact with a paid message first.   So the dating service makes profiles of legitimate looking profiles to lure men into spending money to send emails to these fake profiles... 

Now men who are linked to Nigeria are using dating sites like Plenty of Fish to trick women with their fake profile pictures, usually a caucasian middle age man with generous salaries. They will sweet talk you into giving them your phone number, try to call you everyday to establish a bond, then who knows what else. They prey on lonely women and they use a generic paragraph about how they desperately need you. They use a tragedy such as "I lost my wife and son in a car accident " to get the woman's sympathy. They do not have command of the English language when they attract the victim, a giveaway, even when they say they were born in America. One man I found through Google had a history of fraud, extracting money from unsuspecting victims. The picture just happens to be that of a member of Facebook and an innocent victim of identity theft. I notice that this has been happening to people for quite some time and something should be done about this.

true... fake profiles could be harmless, but what about fake dating websites who are after your money?

It seems to me, that some sites themselves put lots of fake profiles to appear as if there are lots of people on their site. These profiles even take part on the site forums to attract real profiles to take part on it. I, only, can't understand why are they doing it.

 I believe I have figured out why they send these profiles on Match. 

For the 6 month guarantee, you HAVE to email people back to show that you are trying or they won't honor the guarantee.  

I believe they send out these bogus profiles to gauge that.

I have been hit lately by TWO fakes (I think).  The latest is "john" from Illinois but when he gets you to match.com's chat feature, "he" tells you that he lives in Wales.  His english is very poor.  I looked up his email address using google and the first entry was about "fake dating profiles."  I clicked there and saw the same photo of "john."  I did give him my email address but I did not give him my yahoo chat name.  But that reminds me of the first possible "faker," Alfredo Jefferson.  Says he lives locally but is currently in France.  Both of these guys wanted me to install yahoo chat client on my computer.  Thankfully, I did not do that.  But I did give the first guy my yahoo account name.  What is their endgame? What do they want and what can they get?  Is my computer compromised by chatting with this "john" guy on match.com's chat feature?

I'm east european living in Wales and I just want to say. "John" can be real english guy ... Wesh education system is on "Afrika" level. I know many welsh guys who can properly spell.

 thats interesting that you mentioned the fact that they wanted you to install yahoo chat cuz they asked the same thing from me! I didnt do it though. In fact, after reading all of this, I left the dating site cuz the idea of fake profiles, etc. freaks me out

You failed to mention one type of fake profile. That is the Website Created fake profile. I would have to say that around 80% of all the female profiles you see on a dating website are just made up people. If the company didn't fill up their site with these fake profiles, then guys wouldn't sign up. Its all a scam, you see.

 Well, there's another group off fakers. I'm part of that group. I'm doing research on dating sites, so I have created several male and female profiles in order to compare services and social behavior. And, I can tell you, it's really not hard to do. So, yes, I can imagine that there are thousands and thousands of fake profiles.

I am a man, so my opionion is tainted, yet, I can tell, some dating sites have a very misleading policy. For example: I have noticed that female profiles are sometimes boosted by the company approach. Furhtermore, females often have more free options. This might be a reason why lot of female profiles are actually not active. Yet, when the enthousiastic man looks to the vast amount of interesting ladies, he will be motivated to pay for full acces. Furthermore, since I have started this, I actually got really disgusted from the behavior of some men. So, that also might be a reason for women with good intentions to leave their intrest in the dating site.

So, be carefull before you pay!

I have just had a horrible experience with a supposedly trusted dating site - and met an "american soldier serving in Iraq" Months later it turned out to be someone elses photos he kept sending me - a genuine soldier!

Thankfully for me he never asked for money at all so not sure what his end game was but lucky ive just walked away with hurt pride. These idiots need to be stopped as it is giving dating sites a bad reputation and genuine people that want to meet someone and fall in love are finding it even harder. We need to make sure every bad experience is talked about so it helps others!