Dating Website wants to be the "Facebook" of the Dating World

Forget those old-school dating websites that have you create your own profile. Now, a dating website will do it for you, whether you like it or not.

Last week, Facebook filed a cease-and-desist letter to Gotham Dating Partners, Inc., saying their plans to collect public data from sites like Facebook to create online profiles violates Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Gotham plans to collect information from various sources besides Facebook, according to Damon Jordan, vice-president of marketing for Gotham. They will include data from government census, mailing lists, and marriage and divorce records. Once the information is posted, a person can delete or update his own profile for free. But if they want to contact someone else, there is a fee.

And if their Facebook profile lists them as "single", they will automatically be added to Gotham's dating sites. Gotham's dating site roster includes UglyPeopleDate.com, PrisonHookup.com, and MarryMeFirst.com, among others.

They plan to relaunch on February 14th.

Jordan commented last week to news website the Star, "you can virtually do everything on our sites that you can do on Facebook. On Valentine's Day, you will be able to do that, and some. The value of Facebook is in the information, via membership, that it has on the public. They fear they won't have value anymore. Who would invest in a company going public sometime this year, for value that another company has, with significantly less overhead."

In any case, if you want to ensure your information stays private, you may want to make sure your profile is deleted from Gotham's site. And remove your Facebook relationship status.