General News

An Associated Press article pointed me to a new eHarmony spoof ad done by the folks at FunnyOrDie (which was co-founded by the former SNL comedian, Will Ferrell). In this new video, Lindsay Lohan makes fun of herself and eHarmony by pretending to talk about her dating profile. She brings up everything from her late night partying to her DUI arrests.

This video is the latest in a series, which spoof the now famous eHarmony TV commercials which interviews couples who found love on the dating service. Saturday Night Live and MadTV even have done parodies.

Note: Unfortunately the source to the video and/or image which once was displayed here has since been removed by the authors for an unknown reason.

For a more serious look at this online dating service, read our eHarmony review.

On April 6th, 2009 the Game Show Network debuted the new version of The Newlywed Game. As mentioned in a previous story we did, this show is sponsored by eHarmony. One critic called the show a "30-minute-long infomercial for eHarmony with a game show scattered here and there." The show doesn't stray far from the original concept but I found it lacked the wit of previous hosts like Bob Eubanks from the 60s.

Carnie Wilson is an interesting choice as the new host for the show. She taped the first set of 40 shows over 11 days when she was 5 1/2 months pregnant (due June 2009). This is also here first stint at hosting a game show. If you don't remember who Carnie is, she is the daughter of Brian Wilson, the lead singer of the Beach Boys. She also had a successful singing group called Wilson Phillips in the early 90s. Since then she also had a TV talk show.

For a review of The Newlywed Game TV show read TV Squad.

For more information about the dating site, read our eHarmony review.

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.