A few weeks ago I wrote about the recent partnership between DatingHeadshots and Honesty Online, which enables anyone to buy a persistent portable identity credential and a headshot at the same time. The alliance also features other services such as profile writing. Expect to see other offers embedded in either site soon. This is all part of the Dating Vendor Alliance I have been working on for some time now. More on that in a few weeks when we will have a major announcement.
Today, CheckedProfile was featured in Tech Crunch. CheckedProfile is the latest company to attempt to bring authenticity to online dating.
The problem is that it doesn’t work. Putting pereived client bias on hold for a minute, once you see their system, it’s clear that CheckedProfile leaves the door wide open to spoofing since they don’t check your picture against a reference photo. I could have had my neighbor take the photos and pay with my credit card, rendering the whole service moot.
I’ve been advising BetterDatingBureau on their photo verification service. BetterDatingBureau uses an uploaded photo of your drivers license, which, while not as foolproof as the DatingHeadshots/HonestyOnline solution, at least makes use of a reference photo.
One issue I had with CheckedProfile was that the photo upload feature on the home page appears to be broken in Firefox on Mac, but worked fine in Safari.
I’m glad to see companies working hard to improve the online dating experience for singles. Some services are more useful than others, and the marketplace will tell us fairly soon which one is preferred by not only singles but the dating sites they frequent.
Update: I see that sites like Plentyoffish place their logo on images, effectively covering up the verification seal added to the bottom of the photo. That kind of defeats the whole purpose now, doesn’t it?
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It’s hard to image a system that would be foolproof. If people really want to get away with a fake picture, they’re going to be able to. All such companies can do is improve confidence, not eliminate doubt.
Those stats are completely bogus. Now run a survey on how many people have ran into profiles from nigerian or russian scammers on paid dating sites and you will find about 80% have… Scammers have no problems verifiying their pictures if it can get them to scam more people.
ok here goes. in the past week ive been hit on by 4 yes 4 nigerian scammers.
it only took me 10 minutes to figure this out when i started checking the site romancescam.com. sure enough all the the 4 were on this site. i reported them on their first contact with me and found that both jdate and singleparentmeet had taken their profiles down as they were contacting me. i didnt know this was happening and i asked these extremely handsome men why i could nolonger find their profiles. the quick answer from them was…”i want to talk only with you”..”you are the love of my life (a clue, ya think). then came the poor grammar, misspelled words, and asking for my phone number and im address(another clue..jeez).
my experience is that many of these site are on the ball with removing these predators, and theyre friendly enough to thank you for your help.
be cautious friends, very cautious.
its hard enough out there to find a decent guy/gal and this crap just wastes all of our time.
happy hunting, for the right one. dont be fooled by a pretty/handsome face. if it seems to be to good to be true….guess what it is!
You sould always try and find dating websites that carry the dataprotection seal. Like this your rights would be protected as the website would be strictly following the data protection rules.