Safety

In Mecklenburg County, North Carolina reported rape cases are up 16 percent this year. The county has a population of almost 1 million people and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are blaming "Internet dating and online classifieds offering sexual services" as one of the main reasons for the rise in rape cases. Across America the number of reported rapes has increased by 30 percent since 1993. Part of these increases are attributed to less shame in the social stigma of being a victim and in the city of Charlotte's case, stepped up outreach programs.

The Charlotte police have also contacted Craigslist,

... asking the online posting company to warn women advertising personal services that Charlotte had become too dangerous for them.

In Mecklenburg, the previous 2 years saw a downward trend in rape cases but with the rise this year, the police are for some reason pointing the finger at adult Internet dating services. Online dating is not, new and has been very popular over the last 5 years. With Craigslist in the news lately (see Story) I think they were just an easy target for the police to lay blame. Craigslist is of course not completely blameless here and it is well known they are having problems with illegal services being posted in their online personals category, it's just that these problems have been going on for a number of years, not just in the last year when Mecklenburg County has seen the rise in reported rapes.

We have had a run of press releases over the last week or so dealing with dating services. I found one for eHarmony in which they have chosen to use the fraud-fighting technology called the Interceptas platform, from Accertify. eHarmony reviewed several fraud detection systems and found the platform from Accertify would enhance their fraud-fighting capabilities the best. Interceptas is a tool for e-commerce websites and it:

provides comprehensive fraud-fighting tools and components in a single, integrated system that allows merchants to integrate more data into the fraud-fighting process for improved screening success. The platform can be used to manage a variety of data management challenges across the enterprise. In addition, its automated workflow features strengthen fraud defenses and reduce the manual effort involved in fraud protection.

Incereptas is just one of the many systems eHarmony uses for a multi-pronged fraud protection strategy.

For more information on the dating site mention in this article, check out our eHarmony Review.

According to The National, there are as many as 40 million singles from the United States who are looking for love on social networking sites and online dating services. With the recent bad press online personals has received lately due in large part of several murderers meeting their victims through Craigslist, The National decided to take a further look at the dangerous side of online dating.

The article brought up several cases, including the 2 Craigslist ones mentioned above.

In April a Boston medical student, Philip Markoff, dubbed the “Craigslist killer” by the media, was arrested and charged with murdering a masseuse who advertised on the popular website’s erotic services section.

Two months later Craigslist was hit with another scandal when it emerged that a North Carolina man used the site to hire a man to rape his wife while the husband watched.

The Online Dating Insider, David Evans, was quoted in an article on the Washington DC radio station website for WTOP about online dating safety. Apparently another woman last weekend was kidnapped on a date by a man she met on Craigslist.

In the Fairfax County incident, the 23-year-old woman on her third date with Dennis Rother. Police say while at her Fair Lakes apartment Saturday, Rother ordered the woman to undress, threatened her with knives then told her to get dressed and forced her into the car. Her erratic driving caught the attention of a George Mason University police officer. He followed her and she was able to flee at a stop light.

I believe this is the third reported incident in the last month or so of a woman getting kidnapped or murdered by someone they met through Craigslist.

For more on the story and some pointers on how to be safe on a first date visit WTOP.com.

Background Checks and Identity Verification on members of dating sites have been getting a lot of attention in the media over the last year or so. This attention came to the forefront due mainly to New Jersey passing legislation called the Internet Dating Safety Act, which requires dating sites to notify visitors who live in New Jersey if they conduct criminal background checks or not on members.

Criminal Background Checks and Identity Verification both require the user to submit additional information so a search can be done. One of the many problems with most Criminal Background Checks is they don't verify the identity of the member they are dealing with. I am sure most criminals, especially when the dating site promotes the fact that they do criminal background checks, do not give out their real information. They will either give fake information or just find a name and address on the internet and pass that off for their own. Scanning criminal databases for a fake user will just return zero results, which to them means the member passed the check. The other problem with criminal background checks is (at least in the United States and Canada), there are hundreds of law enforcement databases out there and most are not communicating with each other. So, if the crime is not Federal then the chances it will be found remains small by most Background Check services.

Identity Verification relies on public record databases to do the job. Usually users are required to give their name, address and birthday. From there the verification service will search government databases for your information. When found, the service will ask you additional information on file to ensure the identity is yours. These additional questions are not always the same for every person. Questions can include, if you are married, your occupation and where you work, to the name of a relative. If this is all completed successfully then the user will have a verified status. The problem of Identity Verification services is websites like Intelius (US only) offer the same information to the general public from the same government databases for as low as a couple of bucks. A scammer could just perform one of these searches before he has to do an Identity Verification on a website.

The third type of related product is a Trust or Reputation service like the one from Iovation called ReputationManager. Here it is not necessarily the user who is trusted but the computer or electronic device they use. A unique ID is generated for each device (how this ID is generated is kept secret), and from their they can track if any previous fraudulent or suspicious activities have happen before on the computer. This can range from knowing if a previous transaction made from the computer was successful, too spamming activities like someone creating multiple accounts on a website within a certain time period.

All of these services have their problems and workaround but the best solution for a dating site would be using a combination of all these services to stop scammers. When you combine a Identity Check, with a Criminal Background Check, with a Reputation Service you can ensure maximum protection for your members. A website that offers a paid service or products can offer even further protection since they will have the additional knowledge of knowing if your bank or credit card information was verified by a financial institution.

I saw this article on December 1st at CNet News. It talks about a recent ruling regarding a cyber bullying, suicide and MySpace.

The specifics of the Lori Drew case are messy and emotional. The important fact is that there is no federal cyber bullying statute, so the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles turned to a novel interpretation of existing computer hacking laws to try to punish the woman. The general idea is that in creating terms of service, a Web site owner specifies the rules of admission to the site. If someone violates any of those contractual terms, the "access" to the Web site is done without authorization, and is thus hacking.

A jury found Lori guilty of 3 misdemeanor violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This means she could get up to $300,000 in fines and a year in prison.

At the moment, (unless it gets overturned) using this case as a example, a websites Terms of Service currently have the power of US federal hacking laws. As the article points out most companies have strict Terms of Service. Google is used as an example. Their terms do not allow people under the age of 18 to use any of Google's services. Which 17 year old and under teen exactly follows this term? You would be hard press to find one. Most dating sites have strict policies as well. You are not suppose to join Match.com if you are married and eHarmony forbids members from lying in their profiles. Breaking these rules in theory classifies you as a computer hacker which mean you could potentially be charged.

Read MySpace ruling could lead to jail for lying online daters for the full story.