Online Dating

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.

The bad news just keeps coming for Ashley Madison.

The adultery dating site was hacked last month by a group calling itself The Impact Team. At the time of the security breach, The Impact Team threatened to release customer records online if Ashley Madison was not shut down.

Avid Life Media (ALM), which runs Ashley Madison and other dating sites, did not back down and the hackers made good on their threat. More than 30 million email addresses and credit card numbers have been exposed, including those of notable figures in entertainment and politics.

In the wake of the leak, things have only gotten worse for Ashley Madison. There are reports of suicides that may be tied to the hacking scandal. Avid Life Media is offering a $500,000 reward to anyone with info that leads to the arrest of the hackers. The company is also facing a $760 million class action lawsuit over the data hack.

Eliot Shore, a widower from Ottawa, is the plaintiff in the suit filed this week in Ontario against Avid Life Media and Avid Life Dating, a subsidiary that runs Ashley Madison. The legal action alleges that the privacy of thousands of Canadians was breached when the hackers infiltrated Ashley Madison.

"Numerous former users of AshleyMadison.com have approached the law firms to inquire about their privacy rights under Canadian law," the law firms Charney Lawyers and Sutts, Strosberg LLP said in a statement. "They are outraged that AshleyMadison.com failed to protect its users' information. In many cases, the users paid an additional fee for the website to remove all of their user data, only to discover that the information was left intact and exposed."

Lawyer Ted Charney told VICE News that around 100 people have expressed interest in joining the class action so far, noting that anyone who registers will remain anonymous.

It will be up to a court to decide whether Ashley Madison did enough to protect its customers. David Fraser, a Halifax-based internet, technology, and privacy lawyer, thinks the class action faces “a bit of a challenge.” He says the Ashley Madison terms of service are "decidedly consumer unfriendly" and "completely covered their butt."

There may even be a question over whether this can be a class action at all. Ashley Madison's terms preclude customers from filing such suits, but consumer protection legislation in Ontario protects the right to do so.

Either way, it won't be the end of the issue for Ashley Madison. The Associated Press reported that another lawsuit seeking class action status was filed in the US days after the hack became public.

Japan has a well-deserved reputation for being a techno locally advanced nation, but there's one piece of the technological puzzle they haven't mastered: online dating.

Japan is a cultural and economic powerhouse faced with a serious population crisis. The country's overall population will reportedly contract by almost a third within the next 90 years. Its birthrate is one of the lowest on earth, and the marriage rate is also declining.

On top of that, a 2014 survey conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association found that 49% of all respondents had not had sex in the past month, and 18% of men said they had no interest in sex at all.

Add it all together, and you have a country facing some very unique problems. What happens when people no longer want to procreate?

The answer to that remains to be seen. For now, many are asking how Japan got there in the first place and what can be done about it.

Comedian Aziz Ansari and sociologist Eric Klinenberg address the issue in their new book, Modern Romance. "The Japanese are legitimately worried about running out of Japanese people," they write.

One reason could be a cultural fear of being perceived as the sleazy, superficial player-type known as “charai.” Online dating carries a similar social stigma in many countries, but it could be amplified in Japan, causing Japanese singles to avoid it entirely.

Another issue could be online dating's reliance on profile photos. "In Japan, posting any pictures of yourself, especially selfie-style photos, comes off as really douchey,” reads Modern Romance. Instead of posting selfies, which are considered too narcissistic, Japanese singles post photos with multiple people – or even no people at all. It wouldn't be unusual to come across a profile with a picture of a pet or a posession, like a rice cooker.

And that's not all. According to a recent Fast Company article, many singles in Japan view online dating as a scam. Scams sites proliferated back in the 90s, and reports of scams aren't scarce today either. It's scared many singles away and done nothing to reduce the stigma.

Some are using social networking and meetup sites to meet new people, but out-in-the-open online dating is still a controversial subject in a country that prizes subtlety. Companies like Tinder, Match, and OkCupid can't flourish in Japan because the cultural differences are too great.

With young Japanese singles increasingly expressing frustration, the country's dating scene is ready for the “disruption” Silicon Valley startups are so fond of touting. The question is, which company will step up and be the first to blaze a trail into the brave new world?

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.

I read a lot of online dating profiles, and have found a certain commonality. Unfortunately, it’s something that many people don’t think is a deterrent for potential matches, so they don’t notice that they’re doing it. Or they think it will help weed out matches if they include it, but if you do this, it works against you.

What is this thing that we do that is hindering rather than helping our chances?

We state upfront, at the beginning of the profile exactly what we don't want.

In other words, phrases like “no drama, please” is like waving a red flag to your potential dates. As one dater said in her cheeky profile: “your baggage should fit in the glove compartment of your car.” Unfortunately, she is asking for trouble. These kinds of phrases should be tossed. So should descriptives like “no cheaters, crazies, players, gold-diggers, liars,” and those who post “fake profile pictures.”

Why is this such a bad thing? After all, most of us want to avoid these types, right?

The truth is, when you state what you don’t want, you are not only turning off the very people you want to attract (who will assume you are just as crazy, or a liar, etc.), you will attract the kind of dater you don’t want to meet. Are you ready for the drama? Didn't think so.

Your profile isn’t a sounding board for all of your past experiences. While others might identify with you, it won’t necessarily attract them to you. In fact, it works against you. They might be envisioning you stalking them (if you’ve dated cheaters), or that you have lied about your age or posted old photos (if you mentioned no liars), or that you are a drama queen if you are emphatic about not wanting drama in your profile.

Instead, your profile needs to focus on the life you want to create – your future. If you really want to attract someone to you, you have to paint an inviting picture. In other words, focus not only on the positive, but let them know who you are – funny, sensitive, intelligent, really into anime, a Dodgers fan, whatever you would like to include. Invite a conversation by talking about your interests, and asking if potential dates have any stories to share.

Inviting a conversation goes a long way. Describing your interests, your passions, your curiosity about life is sexy and attractive. It makes people want to find out more. They can better envision what dating you might be like.

Emphasizing what you don’t want in a relationship doesn’t communicate anything about you and what you do want, so it’s much harder for potential matches to visualize being in a relationship with you – except for its potential negative consequences. Avoid this, and you will improve your online dating experience significantly.