General News

I was just thinking last week about the dating site, Engage. I was wondering what had happened to this dating site which was in the news a fair bit, back in 2006. Engage twist to online dating was to allow members to do the matching for other Engage members.

The funny thing is, this morning I was reading the Online Dating Inside blog and found out it had been purchased recently, by of all dating companies, Spark Networks. The New York Times reported in January of 2008 that Spark Networks is for sale itself (see Story).

Spark Networks other popular dating sites include JDate, BlackSingles.com and AmericanSingles.com.

According to an online report, it looks like email spammers are spoofing Match.com. Since Monday spammers have sent out emails that appear on the surface to be from Match.com.

The attack involves messages claiming to be from someone on the dating website who wants to show the user pictures and videos.

If the link is clicked on, you are then directed to a malicious website which then attempts to install a fake video player which is actually the Trojan called Papras. From the F-Secure website summary page on this Malware:

Trojan-PSW.Win32.Papras.DC steals login credentials and other sensitive information on the compromised system. It also drops and uses a rootkit driver to hide itself. The rootkit driver is detected as Rootkit.Win32.Agent.SZ.

This is definitely not something you want installed on your computer.

The good news is most of the popular Anti-Virus programs will protect you from this threat being installed now (as long as you keep them updated), but as always you should be careful when clicking on any link from an email. If you get an email that you are unsure of and it is from a website you deal with, always visit the website by your browsers bookmarks instead of the link in the email. You should also forward the email to the company to let them know you think someone is sending you fake emails.

Match.com is far from the first site to be spoofed like this, though it is the first time I have heard of a dating site having this trouble. Usually it is the major banks or websites like PayPal which get targeted by email spoofers.

Visit mxLogic for more information on this story and read F-Secure for more about what Papras modifies on your computer.

Our last review to reach this milestone was eHarmony in February when they surpassed the 100,000 page view mark. As of this minute our Match.com review has 100,010 page views. This makes them our 6th review to reach this milestone. Match.com also received 2 awards from our latest Dating Sites Reviews Choice Awards, one for Editor's Top Pick - Over All and a Gold in the [staticpage: 2008-Dating-Sites-Reviews-Singles-Choice Single's Choice Award], our top award.

For more information on this popular dating site, read our Match.com review.

Perfect Match just let us know of their new Buy 2, Get 2 Free promotion. This means when new members signup and purchase a 2 month subscription, they will get 2 additional months for Free.

To be eligible for this promotion, visit Perfectmatch.com.

Perfect Match is a dating site that combines the best of two types of dating sites. You get a detailed profile and a relationship assessment which helps them generate matches for you using the DUET Compatibility matching system plus, you can search for members yourself using their advance website search tools. This popular dating site has been featured on many TV shows including Dr. Phil, The Today Show and Dancing with the Stars.

For more information on this dating site, read our Perfect Match review.

The Richard Ivey School of Business (The University of Western Ontario), Intouch Magazine (Winter 2009 edition), has a feature story about the history of a few of their graduates who are successful business men in the online dating industry. Lavalife co-founder Nicholas Paine (HBA ’83) is interviewed first. He talks about his experience in the early 1990's of converting their Tele-classifieds business (Classifieds over the phone) into a web personals site, and by 2001 into the popular dating site Lavalife.

Sam Moorcroft (MBA ’95), is also interviewed about how he started the popular Christian dating site, ChristianCafe.com. In the late 90's Sam had used a U.S. based Christian dating service to meet women locally and on the advice from a friend decided to start a website himself.

The key to the success of Christian Cafe.com was filling a niche in the market. Moorcroft knew from the women he had dated that they wanted to meet believers like themselves.

In the beginning years Sam and his brother held down several jobs to support themselves while they got their online dating site off the ground. In ten years ChristianCafe.com has grown into a multi-million dollar business.

To find out more information about these dating services from Canada, read our ChristianCafe.com review and our Lavalife review.

eHarmony legal troubles may be over in New Jersey but in California they are just starting. According to a press release another class action lawsuit has been filed and certified by California Superior Court Judge, Victoria Chaney.

The plaintiffs in that case maintain that eHarmony’s decision to establish a separate site for gays rather than integrate its flagship site, eHarmony.com, amounts to an unlawful “separate but equal” policy and the continued marginalization of gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

eHarmony's separate site for gay singles is called Compatible Partners, which just launched recently.

An article on QUEERTY called If eHarmony Must Allow Gay Dating, Should Gay Sites Have To Welcome Straights? examines the California lawsuit more closely with some good comments by their readers. The author seems to be on eHarmony's side as he points out if eHarmony must allow gay singles to join their dating site, then sites like ManHunt and Adam4Adman should allow straight singles to join. Some of these gay dating sites do allow heterosexuals to join but most do not cater directly to this type of sexual orientation.