General News

Tired of Tinder and endless swiping that leads nowhere? While the dating app is popular, it’s leaving most online daters a little cold. Many come across fake profiles, or they match with someone only to have them disappear before actually meeting in person. And then there is the whole hook-up reputation.

So what is an online dater to do? New dating apps like The Grade and Bumble are setting out to alleviate online dating fatigue by putting their resources into creating more quality matches, so users can have a better overall experience. Specifically, these apps analyze and the behavior of their own members, so other users can see how they rate.

Bumble, founded by former Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe, aims to give power back to female daters. Bumble only allows the woman to reach out and make the first move – not the guy. So she is in control of the dating experience. A recent article in International Business Times revealed that a new feature Bumble will be rolling out is a verification program called “VIBee” -- a system that rewards users with a badge if they have good behavior on the app. The feature will aim to discourage users from nonstop swiping (left or right), and from spam messaging. If a match sees you have the badge, you’re more likely to be contacted – or so the thinking goes.

The Grade operates in a similar fashion, and as the name suggests – grades people on their behavior while using the app. The grading system is three-fold: you are "graded" based on how complete your profile is, how long it takes you to respond to messages, and the quality of the messages you send. In other words, the app will analyze message quality, including length, spelling mistakes, slang and hostile words and then assign you a letter grade, like in school. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really check context, so while some words might be “red flags” in certain contexts but not others, you could be penalized for using them at all.

Founders of The Grade pride themselves on the fact that they are weeding daters out based on how they behave. With about 100,000 downloads of The Grade so far, approximately 1,000 have been expelled and 2,000 are in danger of “failing.”

Cliff Lerner, founder of The Grade, told International Business Times: “We’re not saying we’re going to take on Tinder. We don’t want every user. All of our users are going to be high quality and accountable for their behavior. A lot of people will be kicked off.”

Lerner’s app focused on the complaints he kept hearing from female online daters, who were asking for an app that allowed them to handle offensive or hostile messages from men. Most women who have online dated have encountered such messages from time to time, which has created a huge trust problem with online dating apps and services.

Behavioral monitoring might be the next Tinder after all, at least for female daters.

The hack isn't the only bad press plaguing the Ashley Madison camp. Following the security breach, the leak of sensitive customer info, and a class action lawsuit, a former employee is now back in the news for claiming she was told to create hundreds of fake profiles for non-existent female “members.”

Doriana Silva, who worked at the company’s headquarters in Toronto, Canada, tried to sue the firm after claiming she suffered a repetitive strain injury after being told to input 1,000 counterfeit memberships in a short period of time.

According to court documents, Silva alleges that her job “entailed concocting phony profiles of alluring females and inputting these profiles into the appellants' online dating service in order to attract male subscribers.” She claims she was given only three weeks to create 1,000 fake profiles on Ashley Madison.

Her claim states that the purpose of the profiles is to “entice paying heterosexual male members to join and spend money on the website. They do not belong to any genuine members of Ashley Madison — or any real human beings at all." She also claims she was led to believe that the creation of fake profiles was considered a normal business practice in the industry.

Silva claimed £10 million in damages when she launched her case in 2012. Avid Life Media, Ashley Madison's parent company, counter-sued. The two sides agreed to drop their cases earlier this year, but the suit is back in the news following the big hack.

Online security experts have suggested Ashley Madison is perhaps guilty of further fraud. Some believe the company may have purchased bulk email addresses from marketing companies in order to create the impression that their user base is significantly larger than it really is.

A source involved in the FBI's investigation into the leak told The Daily Telegraph that inspections of the database suggest that a large number of the female profiles on Ashley Madison were in fact created by a relatively small number of individuals.

Ashley Madison says on its website that it cannot “guarantee the authenticity of any profile,” but it's hardly an uncommon phenomenon for an online dating site to artificially inflate its number of profiles to appear more attractive to new users. Ashley Madison may have taken publically available information from other databases to use on its site.

Alternatively, actual users may have stolen other people's email addresses to avoid giving their real name and contact info.

Either way, the news is ensuring Ashley Madison is hit even harder. Avid Life Media has scrapped plans to float on the London Stock Exchange and now faces serious legal action from those affected by the hack.

Thanks to Labor Day here in the United States and Canada, eHarmony is having a free trial weekend. It starts this Thursday morning September 3rd and runs until midnight (PST) on Monday September 7th.

This free trial weekend (or what use to be called free communication weekends) runs for 5 straight days and it allows all members of eHarmony to communicate for free. When communicating you must complete the guided communication steps first. These are a couple of questions that each member answers which are designed to allow you to learn more about the person and to give you some topics for further conversation. After these steps you can go straight to emailing each other.

The sooner you register, the longer you have to communicate with other members. Registering as a member on eHarmony has always been free with no credit card required. eHarmony has a number of ways to access their service. This includes via the dating app either through your tablet or phone (found on iTunes and Google Play), or via the website through your laptop and mobile devices. Free trials do not include the viewing of profile photos, secure call (phone service), or skipping the guided communication process and going straight to email.

To find out more, our detailed eHarmony review contains further information about this dating service.

You can kiss SexyGirl88 goodbye. Usernames will no longer be part of the dating profile, at least on Match.com. The dating website giant has announced that it will no longer require its members to sign up with usernames, which have long been the cornerstone of the dating profile.

Since Match was created 20 years ago people have used catchy, cute, and frankly sometimes crazy usernames as a way to express themselves. But given the ubiquity of online dating coupled with the popularity of social media, the stigma of “being seen” online no longer exists. Despite the creativity usernames require and how they have playfully enhanced profiles seen by potential matches, Match feels there’s no longer a need for people to hide behind an alias.

Match decided to pay homage to the art of the username by providing some final statistics about them, gathered from its own user database. They created a list of the top 10 “most memorable” user names (making it understandable why many people won’t be sad to see them go):

• TwisDemNipples
• Hardworkingmilf
• IWantAllDaSecks
• DilettosJunkie
• SkittleFartz
• TonyPonyNY
• GlitterIsAColor21
• SPF70Always
• BigGulps32oz
• Assless_Chaps

Match also conducted a survey of its members on some of the best and worst usernames employed over the years. (Although we should note that daters could have used this kind of information when usernames were still a part of the equation.) Perhaps this information can help you with your profiles on other dating sites.

Match discovered that your given name matters. Guys named Mike (61%), Dave (60%) and Steve (59%) are the most likely to get messaged by a woman on Match, while men are more likely to contact Sarah (62%), Michelle (60%), and Lisa (59%).

Country music has always been a money-making business, and it seems that daters on Match likewise preferred to emphasize their own country roots. “Countryboy” and “Countrygirl” have been two of the most popularly utilized names on the site, but 78% of women and 36% of men would NOT reach out to someone with that moniker. The least popular usernames - “Babygirl” ( 14%) “Angel” ( 29%) and “Cowboy” (16% ) did not fare too well, either.

Match also found that men and women differed on what they felt made usernames “bad.” According to the survey, 62% of men felt that immature names were a turn-off, while 81% of women felt offensive names were a turn off.

Now that Match no longer requires usernames, perhaps other dating sites will follow suit. Thanks to dating apps, profiles are being streamlined down to their basic elements: photos and a few tags. It makes sense that usernames would become sidelined, too.

For ore on this dating service you can read our review of Match.

A recent article in Vanity Fair made the argument that apps like Tinder have ruined dating. Reporter Nancy Jo Sales interviewed single twenty-somethings to get their impressions of online dating, and it wasn’t pretty. They admit that “Tinder sucks” and yet they still keep swiping for lack of a better way to date.

Part of the problem, she argues, is that people have a hook-up mentality with dating apps, and men especially. They meet girls to have sex under the guise of pretending to date them, and women have been burned more than once – making them skeptical that any guy wants a relationship.

This argument isn’t a new one. But the reporter feels that dating apps are the real problem – the technology, not the people using them. Let me be more precise: dating apps make it easier than ever to meet new people, providing a way for those who are averse to commitment to do a date-and-dump.

The problem I see with this argument is that it assumes technology is the problem. If we ditched dating apps and online dating in general and went back to an “easier time” – say 1995 – when dating was supposedly alive and well, and all single people were looking for long-term romance. But this just wasn’t the case. In fact, people would hook up and avoid commitment with relative ease – they just did it in person at bars and clubs, rather than through a dating app. Maybe their choices were limited, but the behavior wasn’t much better.

Remember The Rules – dating advice lexicon of that decade? It centered around dealing with men who had commitment issues, basically teaching women how to use their sexuality and femininity to get what they wanted – a relationship.

We’ve come a lot further in our relationship progress in my opinion, partly in thanks to online dating. Dating apps have helped make online dating mainstream. They have allowed shy types to interact more easily with new people. And yes – while some people do use them for hooking up, many others are looking for real love.

Dating takes time. It takes meeting a lot of people before a connection happens. That is the nature of dating – and with a dating app, the haystack is considerably bigger when you are just trying to find that one needle. So it will take you that much longer.

Instead of getting discouraged and giving up dating apps and online dating altogether, it’s time for a different approach. Let’s embrace online dating. Be truthful about what you want so you don’t waste someone else’s time. And most importantly, be respectful to your dates and you’ll find yourself meeting people who will respect you in return.

Don’t you wish you could tell if someone on an online dating site was lying, or if all the information provided was accurate and up-to-date? Well it seems there’s an app for that.

Been Verified is targeting users of online dating sites in its marketing campaign. The service provides online background checks to help people “discover, understand and use public data in their everyday lives.” Basically, Been Verified consolidates data from many sources of public records, providing a background check on potential dates, including police records, mortgage deeds, and social networking profiles.

If this is unsettling, remember – it is all information that you volunteered or that is automatically public record. So, everyone is searchable, but sometimes it’s difficult to gather all of the information that’s out there. Been Verified just makes it easy – one-stop shopping, if you will.

Been Verified has dealt with a lot of fake profiles and scammers, so they wanted to get the word out to online daters about how to protect yourself. Following are some tips they recommend:

• It’s a big red flag if your online interest asks you for money, especially if it is early on and if you’ve never met face-to-face. Scammers will often ask for money on behalf of a sick relative, a short-term loan to pay rent, or travel money to visit you if he lives out of state.
• Be careful if he avoids meeting you, especially if he states he will be out of the country. There is a reason that scammers don’t want to meet face-to-face.  If they are running a game, they will come up with all kinds of excuses to avoid meeting. Some may use work travel as an excuse, others may say they have shared custody of his kids and it’s his weekend to keep them, or that an ill mother needs to taken care of. Listen carefully to what they are saying.
• To avoid identity theft scams, try Google's reverse image search. Take a few minutes to search the profile's pictures, and if the reverse search shows up across hundreds of pages, it is highly likely that the person is being deceitful and is using someone else’s images as his own.
• When chatting online, make sure the flow of conversation makes sense to ascertain if you’re talking to a live person or a robot profile. Mix up the conversation; see if the person continues to track with you. If they are unable to switch gears, it could be a robot responder giving predetermined responses.
• If his profile is comprised of only one photo and the text is basically empty, they could be a scammer. People who don’t want to be held accountable to the content of their profile will simply leave it blank. If they are too lazy to take the time to self-disclose and post some self-descriptive text, then you should probably take a pass.

Been Verified was founded in 2007 by Josh Levy and Ross Cohen with a mission to help people discover, understand and use public data in their everyday lives. With millions of app downloads and millions of monthly visitors, BeenVerified allows individuals to find more information about people, phone numbers, email addresses and property records.