General News

From this Friday, May 22, 2009 through till Memorial Day, May 25, 2009 eHarmony is having a Free Communication Weekend. This means both new and existing members will be able to review and communicated for free with all of their matches. Once again fast tracking of the communication process is not included, you will have to rely on the four stage Guided Communication approach before you will have complete freedom to message.

This is Free Communication Weekend number 17 for eHarmony. Canada had their free holiday weekend last week, and now with the Memorial Day holiday, it is the United States turn. With every FREECOM weekend eHarmony has, it becomes more and more popular. Expect a large number of new members this time around. In general, eHarmony is the most popular with singles in the 35 to 55 plus age range, and slightly more with females.

Read our eHarmony review for more information on this dating site which specializes in personality matchmaking.

Surprisingly over 2 percent of users on JDate are not Jewish. This doesn't mean 2 percent of users have lied on JDate, they have just answered profile questions like Do you attend synagogue? or Do you keep kosher? with the options "I will tell you later" or "Never". They usually also select “Willing to convert” under religious background as well. Anonymous non-Jewish JDaters have noted a number of reasons for using a dating site designed just for Jews. Reasons include having a number of Jewish friends and knowing a lot of the religion, to hearing about other single's success on the dating service.

Some of the Jewish members have complained about allowing non-Jews on JDate. They use the site specifically to meet other single Jews, and do not want to deal with any members who are not. I understand were these members are coming from but I do not see the harm in allowing non-Jewish members from joining if they are serious about meeting someone. All members, who don't want to see non-Jewish profiles, have to do is update there search preferences and deselect "Willing to convert" and "Will tell you later" from the Religion preference. Once the preferences are saved these members will never come up in a search again.

I don't think JDate.com will ever not allow non-Jewish members from joining. The percentage who do join is small and if they ever did prevent them then, JDate may get slapped with a legal suit by a unhappy member like eHarmony was in a similar case were they did not allowing same-sex relationships (see Story).

For more details on this Jewish dating community, read our JDate review.

The controversial Erotic Services category is being replaced on Craigslist. With the recent so called Craigslist killings and the legal suit which called Craigslist one of the largest sources of prostitution (see Story) the classifieds ad website started on Wednesday to reject any new ads for the category. Instead, a Adult Services category will be built to take its place. Ads for this new adult category will have to go through a manual approval process and cost $10, which is twice as much as ads for the old Erotic Services category. It is unknown if any revenue generated from this new adult category will go to charity as what was happening with the previous category. Current advertisements for illegal sexual activities in Craigslist Erotic Services category will expire Wednesday May 20, 2009.

Will this move stop prostitution on Craigslist? I highly doubt it. While the Adult ads may meet the websites new guidelines, I am sure the world's oldest trade will continue to use Craigslist to subtly promote their services.

For the full Craigslist story, read our Craigslist review.

On Thursday, an unknown number of the over 200 million Facebook users, gave up their passwords to hackers in an email phishing scheme. Hackers initially cracked passwords of a number of Facebook accounts and then, using these accounts, sent emails to the account holders Facebook friends telling them to visit the website. The link in the email actually sent them to another website which was made to look like Facebook. When the friends logged in, they unwittingly gave up their real Facebook username and password. It is thought that the attack was designed to spread SPAM and steal identities. The affected Facebook accounts have now been closed. Apparently Facebook faced a similar attack 2 weeks ago.

Last year a similar attack type of phishing attack happened to Facebook and MySpace users. The difference that time was a virus called Koobface, which users unwittingly downloaded, was used to generate a fake email.

Last month Match.com members faced a similar phishing expedition by hackers when they were sent emails that looked like they came from Match (see Story). The email asked them to log into a fake website to view pictures and a video which required a special video player. This video player was actually a virus.

For the full story, read Reuters.

It's time to Flirt, Communicate and Connect for FREE.

This Friday (5/15/2009), Saturday (5/16/2009) and Sunday (5/17/2009) new and existing Chemistry users will be able to communicate for free. This includes sending and receiving emails. A number of Chemistry.com TV commercials also have gotten the word out, so it should be an extra busy weekend. With the additional media coverage, it will create a great opportunity for you to try out the dating service!

This is Chemistry.com third Flirtathon, with the last one happening the beginning of last month (see Story). For more information on a dating service which is serious about matchmaking, read our Chemistry.com review.

We just got confirmation that a Free eHarmony Canada Communication Weekend is in the works for this coming Labour Day Weekend. From Friday May 15, 2009 up to and including Monday, May 18, 2009 (Victoria Day) new and existing members of eHarmony.ca will be able to not only review matches for free, but communicate with them as well. As stated in our previous post, FastTrack communication is not included with free weekends.

From our count this is Free Communication Weekend number 17 for eHarmony and as usual this one falls on a holiday long weekend. Last year in May, eHarmony actually had 2 free communication weekends (see Story & Story). So, if they follow the same pattern I would expect a free weekend coming soon for the United States.

Read our eHarmony review for more information on this matchmaking dating site.

UPDATE: According to a post at eHarmony Advice, the eHarmony Free Communication Weekend starts May 15 at 12:01am Pacific Daylight Time through Monday, May 18 at 11:59pm Pacific Daylight Time. That means those of you in other Canadian time zones will have to wait an hour or more. As example, Eastern Time is 3 hours ahead of Pacific Time so the free weekend would start for you at 3:01am EST.