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Yahoo Personals has settled with one Robert Anthony over a date-baiting case from last fall. Yahoo has avoided wasting an enormous amount of time by settling, which means they paid the guy off. I don’t know much about the issue but it sounds like the guy thought he was dating a real person when in fact he was communicating with a test profile.
The takeaway of the settlement is that Y! Personals will inactivate stale profiles and continue to ferret out fake profiles, which they have done all along. Amending the Terms of Service Yahoo relies on members to report bad behavior, that’s the only way they are going to maintain any semblance of a clean database.
Most important is that profiles inactive for 120 days will be rendered unsearchable. This is great news and will hopefully cut down on the number of emails sent to people no longer in the system.
When a user cancels their subscription, a screen will be presented giving them the option to delete the profile, render it unsearchable or keep the profile active. If the user makes no selection, the profile will automatically be deactivated.
I am not clear on the difference between unsearchable and deactivated and in what context would you leave a dating site and leave your profile active?
More at Online Personals Watch.
Category:Legal Tags: LegalBlog reactions
9 responses so far ↓
1
mauricev (Check me out!)
// Aug 28, 2007 at 11:28 pm
There are profiles present in the Yahoo database that are unsearchable, but that can still be viewed if one has th exact URL. Could this be what is meant by unsearchable, yet “active” profile? I just checked one of these profiles and noticed that while it is still present and apparently even allows email to be sent to it, it is not updated the owner’s age.
2
John (Check me out!)
// Sep 16, 2007 at 9:11 am
Yahoo certainly knew abouty fake profiles…from them or other parties. I emailed them repeatedly about obvious fake profiles (the girl wanted someone from 20-70 years old etc). and the never acknowledged or took down the profile. I’m sure lots of them were from Yahoo themselves to intice people to signup. ALSO, and this is the biggie, the day after your account expires, you get all sorts of ‘hot girls’ emaling you…and of course you can’t reply unless you sign up again. Pretty obvious yahoo had to settle this case.
3 myWattle Dating » Blog Archive » Comment on Yahoo! Personals Settles Class Action Suit by John // Sep 16, 2007 at 11:44 am
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4 myWattle Dating » Blog Archive » Comment on Yahoo! Personals Settles Class Action Suit by myWattle … // Sep 16, 2007 at 9:56 pm
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5
K Harris (Check me out!)
// Sep 23, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I joined yahoo personals for a 3 month period and then called to cancel after about 2 months. Then after a holiday weekend I balanced my
checkbook online and saw they had billed me for another 3 months. I called and was robbed of my money.
I had not complained within the required “48 hours” of the “error” so therefore was not entitled to a refund.
I demanded my money back. I claimed they were committing a fraud.
Robbing me of my money so he said that he would put in an “inquiry” into my account. I was refuned for TWO WEEKS of the account. Needless to say I told everyone I knew to never go to yahoo personals for online dating. I met my present husband online and we are very happy but yahoo personals was more of a nightmare to escape than our ex’s. I hope enough people have had a bigger soapbox than myself to help others from being robbed in the future. Thank you for the opportunity to share my experience. KHarris
6
DREDD (Check me out!)
// Feb 13, 2008 at 5:45 pm
WASN’T THERE SOME SORTAS SETTLEMENT OFFERED ALL PEOPLE WHO USED THE YAHOO PERSONALS ?
7 Dating Advice - Anything ‘08 : Blog Archive : Comment on Yahoo! Personals Settles Class Action Suit by DREDD // Feb 13, 2008 at 7:11 pm
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8 Dating Advice - Anything ‘08 : Blog Archive : Comment on Yahoo! Personals Settles Class Action Suit by Dating … // Feb 14, 2008 at 1:15 am
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9
ladys623 (Check me out!)
// Mar 4, 2008 at 4:26 pm
What happened to the checks we were supposed to get before the end of 2007???
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