Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone, but a new study is out that shows how much personal information is shared and sold between website and data aggregators. Especially interesting is what dating sites like OkCupid make available to vendors.

Stanford University computer scientist Jonathan Mayer has released a study concerning behavioral targeting and tracking people across the Internet.

As expected, he found that many companies are involved with monitoring every click and then selling and sharing that information to advertisers so they can target you specifically.

Click a local ad on HomeDepot.com and 13 companies get your name and email address. Type the wrong password into WSJ.com and seven companies get your email. Click the validation link in the signup email for a Reuters newsletter and 5 companies get your email.

Interact with classmates.com and 22 companies get your full name; Bleacher Report sends it to 15 companies.

OkCupid, a free online dating website, appears to sell user information to the data providers BlueKai and Lotame, including gender, age, ZIP code, relationship status, and drug use frequency. (emphasis ed.)

I’m all for trading privacy for convenience and tracking people and their actions across the Internet for things like e-commerce, but there is a fine line where tracking becomes an invasion of privacy. Websites and large data providers’ efforts are not widely regulated here in the US (as it is in EU). The ACLU is concerned, as you should be as well.

Besides tracking pot usage (what advertiser needs to know that?), OkCupid tracks pretty basic stuff. If you want to scare yourself, go look at Rapleaf or read how credit card companies are using your purchase history to target your ads.

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DuoDater is a new Dating Website For Double Dates. At first glance this seems like a great idea but do do you really want to get into your personal history, dating nightmares and other personal topics in front of two complete strangers?

The founder says sites like Match and OKCupid are intimidating and awkward. Not sure how looking at profiles and emailing people is intimidating and going on a 4-way blind date is not. Tip of the cap to DizzyCat for pointing this out.

Match lawsuit: A class-action lawsuit claims that more than 90% of potential dates on Match.com are canceled subscribers, people who never subscribed, duplicates or phantoms the company created to snare its $40 monthly subscription fee. More at the LA Times.

How do you think this ends? “The 45-year-old man told LaPorte County police he had been chatting with a woman from Russia on an online dating site for about a month.”

2date4love enables people unable to have sex to experience love, companionship and intimacy at its deepest level. More info.

Cheek’d has new set of specialty dating cards. The first set is the Wall Street Deck, which will be followed by the New York City, Dog Lover, Travel, Foodie and Wingman editions. For $35, Cheek’d users receive their online profile and a set of 50 cards – each with a different Wall Street phrase – and a unique ID number to direct those who receive the cards to the online profile to learn more about the card giver.  Your first month’s service comes with your initial deck of cards. Each month thereafter, the fee is just $9.95.

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Given the previous post about Match supposedly wanting to build a Badoo clone on Facebook, I decided to poke around the raw html that the Match web servers send to web browsers, which in turn create the Match web pages we look at millions of times every day around the world.

I learned a few things.

To begin with, all Match profiles are Facebook “objects”. Facebook considers just about everything it touches as an “object” and gives it its own unique identifier (like an IP address or social security number, everyone has a unique one. In fact, This blog has been an Object that Facebook knows about for a long time.

Making everything an object makes sense, because as Facebook evolves from a destination to a distributed platform touching everything on the net, they want to be able to reach out and touch, search, share, read and modify as much of the content on the Internet as possible, including my likes, friends, wall posts, apps, etc.

To show you how easy it is to look at people’s personal information on Facebook, check out these examples. Even if you do it with a browser that is not currently logged into Facebook, you can retrieve a fair amount of information about someone or a Fan page.

If you click https://graph.facebook.com/relaxedguy you will see basic information that Facebook knows about me.

{
“id”: “501791841″,
“name”: “David Evans”,
“first_name”: “David”,
“last_name”: “Evans”,
“link”: “http://www.facebook.com/relaxedguy”,
“username”: “relaxedguy”,
“gender”: “male”,
“locale”: “en_US”
}

My Facebook profile photo http://graph.facebook.com/relaxedguy/picture.

Coca-Cola’s Facebook page https://graph.facebook.com/cocacola.

{
“id”: “40796308305″,
“name”: “Coca-Cola”,
“picture”: “http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/203509_40796308305_256509_s.jpg”,
“link”: “http://www.facebook.com/coca-cola”,
“likes”: 32007587,
“category”: “Food/beverages”,
“website”: “http://www.coca-cola.com”,
“username”: “coca-cola”,
“founded”: “1886″,
“products”: “Coca-Cola is the most popular and biggest-selling soft drink in history, as well as the best-known product in the world.\n\nCreated in Atlanta, Georgia, by Dr. John S. Pemberton, Coca-Cola was first offered as a fountain beverage by mixing Coca-Cola syrup with carbonated water….”
}

Enough generic examples, lets’ get to the good stuff.

Primer: The “og:somedata” stuff seen below is what site owners put invisibly at the top of each page they want Facebook to consider an object. For this blog, at the moment its the same details for all pages. For Match, each person is an Object that has special attributes like username, photo url and a few other things.

One of my Match usernames.

<meta property='og:title' content='agood1foru2know'/>

My Match profile web address and the super-special unique identifier.

<meta property='og:type' content='match:person'/>

My full profile address (Match login required)

<meta property='og:url' content='http://www.match.com/profile/showprofile.aspx/?uid=B88an16AMuFBZCSkMRWw5A==&handle=agood1foru2know&tp=ms&trackingID=526684&bannerID=747303' />

Facebook application ID number. This doesn’t look like a regular number, its way too long. Can anyone explain what it is, like a placeholder?

<meta property='fb:app_id' content='89318d7e8d124c0eb6dc64adcbb14c60'/>

Beginning of one of my profiles, edited down for length.

<meta property='og:description' content="What's up summertime singles? Meet a left-of-center ENFP, cynical and funny optimist, pretty charismatic or so I'm told."  />

I’m not sharp enough to decode the possible relationship between the “uid” and the picture url, but the big issue is that over 100 million Match user photos are freely available for anyone to download. (20 million members, average of 5 photos per member = 100 million give or take).

To be fair, Match could be testing this with 500 people and photos aren’t linked to personal information (although embedding meta-data in photos via steganography and other means is done all the time on certain sites).

Also seen in the raw html that comprised Match profiles is the following text:

Upload a Photo & Unlock Hers
Her Photos are Unlocked!

This looks like a Facebook call-to-action. I have to upload a photo to see another person’s photos. Or its another one of those Match features that I never pay attention to, we’ll know soon enough.

What if Match is looking to expose profiles on Facebook as a way to drive Facebook users to Match? This is sort of what they did on a trial basis with Are You Interested a few years ago. But I have a feeling that Match is going for something much bigger. Perhaps even to be the de facto dating site for Facebook.

The dating industry has been discussing this for years, but the fact that Match and Facebook could be partnering on something so big (the Dating tab at the top of your FB profile), well it just boggles the mind. A dating site with hundreds of millions of people on it.

Of course, perhaps the Facebook object code has been there for many moons and I’m way off-base, I certainly don’t view the html source of every dating site I come across (but maybe we all should).

We we do know is that everything is an object to Facebook and that Match has made it so that all 20 million members (arguable) and their photos are objects that Facebook knows about and can act upon. I’m not entirely clear how the bi-directionality of such a situation would pan out, but I can’t wait for the moment a Match-branded Facebook application asks for my permission to access my personal data and write on my wall while being tied to my Match profile.

Put it this way, its either going to rock right out of the gate or risks being another Little Black Book, Match’s first Facebook app. Last time I checked it had 19 active users. But that was years ago, and Match has gotten much smarter about the power of social.

What are the implications of having tighter integration between Match and Facebook? Perhaps such actions as changes to your Match profile, a new photo, a search completed, an email sent, a wink sent, a profile blocked, could end up on your Facebook wall, or at least tracked and your actions used to personalize, drive traffic, attract eyeballs, etc.These actions have showed up on the Match member home page mini-wall for two years now.

Perhaps mini versions of Match profiles will show up in Facebook search. That would actually be pretty cool. Match is well on its way to extending the “wall” concept of publishing updates such as “Someone you have expressed interest in or we think you would like has updated/uploaded/done some other action” to the entire Internet, starting with Facebook.

Fascinating. What else will Match do with Facebook-tagged profiles? Usually you do something somewhere else and your actions show up on your wall. How will your Facebook and Match actions interact and to what benefit?

Match recently updated their Terms of Service. I don’t know what changed (send me a copy of a recent Match TOS if you have one) but the following gives Match carte blanche to use your profile and photos any way it pleases. I think all changes to privacy policy and TOS should be highlighted, but hardly everyone does this. Just take my info and get me to Farmville.

By posting Content to any public area of Match.com, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Match.com, its affiliates, licensees and successors, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, reproduce, adapt, modify and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sub-licenses of the foregoing. You further represent and warrant that public posting and use of your content by Match.com will not infringe or violate the rights of any third party.

One could theoretically create a Facebook app that just like any Facebook app, asks for permission to read certain data, enabling the harvesting of minimal information from potentially millions of Match profiles. I say potentially because I don’t see the Facebook object markup on any other Match site that I checked. I’ve spent enough time diving into the Facebook Social Graph to know that there are a lot of interesting ways to retrieve and manipulate data, and thats just the public Facebook API’s. One wonders what third-party developers could do with this information.

Ok, enough speculation. I need to ponder this some more. Regardless of Match’s intentions in regards to Facebook integration, its a great mental exercise to brainstorm the possibilities.

Hoping you will share your thoughts on the subject.

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I don’t often pick on specific dating sites that make it difficult to deal with billing issues but this reader’s story is one that I am hearing all to often these days, and not just about be2.com.

Lightly edited for length and clarity:

You are probably aware that be2.com are under scrutiny. I signed up with be2 for the 1 month free trial. Not really aware of the fact they automatically renew it to the tune of £149 a month later unless you contact them within two weeks of the payment going out.

When…i went on the site to try to cancel my account and basically couldn’t. The website takes you around in circles and it is impossible. I looked for contact information and it says on the website to cancel your membership you need to fax it in writing, but what a surprise, no fax number. Basically it is deliberately made impossible to contact them.

I again attempted to cancel my membership and hey presto, there is link to cancel my membership however with no refund. Obviously, once they have your money they allow the link.

I have had series of emails where i have tried to argue my case and again you are met with a blank wall of what seem like pre-generated emails. Not only that, the website is fake, two thirds of the profiles are fake, with a shoddy attempt at reality by blurring the photographs.

On further investigation i have found testimonies on the web of hundreds of victims of this scam including an article from the guardian.

On further investigation, the contact numbers for the company listed in the domain database checked via google, do not exist, i’ve tried them.

I suggest signing up for £5, and see what happens, i guarantee you will have exactly the same experience.

From a few minutes of Google searches it seems like this person is not near the only one having trouble with be2′s automatic billing process. The same could be said for a number of high-profile dating sites around the world.

Billing issues like this and the recent brouhaha around background checks have some attorney’s looking at the dating industry as their next big score, although none that I have spoken with have shown an Elliot Spitzer-like effort to call the industry to task. My advice? Clean up your act or the government will do it for you.

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Vindicia launches new version of CashBox billing solution. A few weeks ago I met up with vindicia CEO Gene Hoffman, who told me they now have a number of big dating sites as clients. Gene is awesome, his team is top-notch and they really understand customer retention and acquisition through integrated marketing best practices like no other company I’ve come across.

Hanginout is an Interactive Video Q&A Publishing Platform. Chris Dunn, who was CEO of Mobeze (OnlineBootyCall, Herway), is a co-founder.

I don’t understand Cloud Girlfriend, who’s tag line is “The best way to get a girlfriend is to already have one.” Its a mashup of Match and SecondLife but the description is “We allow people to define their ideal self, find their perfect girlfriend or boyfriend and connect and interact as if that person existed. It can help in learning how to manage a real relationship, and they then take it into the real world.” I’m all for giving singles the tools they need to be better daters, but this is a bit over the top. More at TechCrunch.

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A Hollywood executive raped by a man she met on Match.com is suing the popular dating site, a press release which went out over PR Newswire this afternoon states.

Jane Doe, an Ivy League graduate, currently working in television and film, met Alan Paul Wurtzel, on Match.com in 2010. The two set up a date, after which, Mr. Wurtzel viciously sexually assaulted her. Basic screening would have revealed Mr. Wurztel’s prior history and prevented this attack. Felony charges against Mr. Wurtzel are currently pending in the Los Angeles Superior Court [Case # BA373188].

No much is known at this time, but all accounts point to the fact that the attacker, Alan Paul Wurtzel, has a history of sexual battery and seems to be skilled at paying his way out of trouble.

First and foremost, my heart goes out to those who go through this terrible experience. While online dating clearly needs to be made safer, nobody can agree on what safeguards are appropriate and feasible for both singles and dating sites.

A few things to consider before this gets all blown out of proportion. Thousands of singles have been attacked after meeting people on dating sites. Match.com is reported more often because there are a) more people on the site than other dating sites and people tend to focus on the fact that Match has more money to pay out than say a free site (I don’t believe Jane Doe is even looking for money from Match.)

True.com spent years and a lot of lobbyist money to get a few states to force  dating sites to place warnings on the home page to alert singles to the fact that the site doesn’t perform background checks on all members. Its amazing how many singles think that dating sites do perform background checks.

Just the threat of Jane Doe’s lawyers filing a proposed injunction against Match to shut them down until they perform background checks on all member could be the straw the breaks the camel’s back, so to speak.

Believe me, Match/IAC, is all lawyered up. They have obviously planned for this well in advance and contingency plans are no doubt in place. I can’t believe at this time that such an injunction would be honored, but again, the exposure and damage it could do to the online dating industry could be catastrophic.

What makes this different is the Hollywood connection, the fact that the attacker has a history of similar behavior. I have just learned that ABC-TV will air an interview with Jane Doe today at 4:30pm Los Angeles time.

I have written at length about the differences between background checks and identity verification and the dating industry’s resistance to both. From a business standpoint its understandable. Background checks create consternation and confusion for singles. They seem to think that either we’re all checked or no one is.

The middle ground is where singles start to get upset, because to them it feels like a person has to get checked in order to be considered trustworthy. If you are checked, and I’m not, I am not happy with the fact that I have to shell out another $10-$30 to get verified (round numbers, the pricing for ID verification is much less than a full background check.)

If Match receives 20,000 new members a day, multiply that by $5 per check, and background checks become an instant revenue drain. Multiply that across a billion-dollar industry and one can see why dating sites are going to be watching this unfold very closely.

More on this breaking story as we talk to those involved in the case.

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New Law For Dating in the Works: Connecticut State Rep. Mae Flexer (D) introduced a bill requiring online dating sites that charge fees to provide safety tips and advice to make dating, online and off, safer. If approved, Connecticut would become the third state to regulate internet dating sites, after New York and New Jersey.

Dating sites that charge fees have to put up a common-sense FAQ, but free sites don’t? That makes no sense at all. Flexer is asking for advice and doesn’t know what to put in the Bill, someone needs to sit her down and set her straight about effective online dating safety legislation.

True.com started this years ago with their attempts to establish business dominance by getting states to pass weak legislation along the lines of having dating sites state that they don’t offer background checks on the home page in 12-point type. As if thats going to keep someone from making a bad decision about their dating practices and whom they date.

Bottom Line: Dating companies need to bake mobile phone checkins and other positive behavior modification functionality right into their dating site. Anything less is a waste of taxpayer money and not going to stop the bad guys from preying on the helpless and ignorant or just plain unlucky.

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New Law For Dating in the Works: Connecticut State Rep. Mae Flexer (D) introduced a bill requiring online dating sites that charge fees to provide safety tips and advice to make dating, online and off, safer.

If approved, Connecticut would become the third state to regulate internet dating sites, after New York and New Jersey. Dating sites that charge fees have to put up a common-sense FAQ, but free sites don’t? Hmm…

True.com started this trend years ago with their attempts to establish business dominance by getting states to pass weak legislation along the lines of having dating sites state that they don’t offer background checks on the home page in 12-point type. I have not seen any evidence that this has changed the behavior of online daters or kept them any safer.

As if thats going to keep someone from making a bad decision about whom they date. Irregardless of whether or not the CT Bill will have more teeth, you can’t force people to make better decisions about their dating habits.

Someone needs to sit her down and set Rep. Flexer straight about effective online dating safety legislation while she is in information gathering mode.

Even with full background checks, people are still going to do stupid things out of ignorance and lust, especially when the scammers and bad guys have figured out that scamming one in 10,000 dating site members makes for a good payday.

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Oh no! Looks like Patti Stanger, Millionaire Matchmaker has raised the ire of certain male clients. According to iVillage’s Did the Millionaire Matchmaker Sabotage Her Clients?, three male  millionaires who recently appeared on the BRAVO show complained that their lives and reputations had been ruined.

Interestingly, Stanger’s female millionaire clients don’t seem at all bitter about their TV appearances, even though they got the same harsh on-camera treatment. Caterer Andre Correale says she appeared “exaggerated” on the show, but that it actually helped her business. And PR maven Robin Kassner, whom Stanger called fat and delusional, says she’s since recommended Patti’s services to her friends.

If you are rich and you go on television to find a mate, what do you think they’re going to do? Hint: anything to get ratings.

I have an old client who was on Millionaire Matchmaker a few years ago. In some ways they were authentic, other ways ridiculous and finally, good entertainment, which is all the show is really about in the end.

If you want to see famous people look bad, go watch Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. If you are really hard core, Intervention is the show for you. But getting upset for looking like an ass on television when you signed the release waiver? Guess this one is for the lawyers to fight out.

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Here’s the official Plentyoffish response to the hacking incident.

On January 18th, after days of countless and unsuccessful  attempts, a  hacker gained access to Plentyoffish.com database.  We are aware from our logs that 345 accounts were successfully exported.  Hackers attempted to negotiate with Plentyoffish to “hire” them as a security team.  If Plentyoffish failed to cooperate, hackers threatened to release hacked accounts to the press.

Plentyoffish team had spent several days testing its systems to ensure no other vulnerabilities were found. Several security measures, including forced password reset, had been imposed.  Plentyoffish is bringing on several security companies to perform an external security audit, and will take all measures necessary to make sure our users are safe.

Update***    Just to be clear krebs didn’t have anything to do with this.   I was trying to convey how the hacker tried to create a mass sense of confusion at all times so you never know whats real and what is not.

A) Never mention the duration of attacks and unsuccessful attempts. This is like saying the big guy with the gun next to you is an idiot and has terrible aim.

B) Never mention exact number of hacked accounts. This is not transparency, its TMI.

C) POF didn’t bow to the demands of the alleged hacker. Remains to be seen if this was a good or a bad thing. Hacked profiles on a free dating site are not very interesting, especially when we’re all waiting for the wikileaks bank information to be decrypted.

D) Security audit: too little too late, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. POF has enough mindshare that this is probably going to be a blip on the radar. Perhaps a slight dip in revenue but with the timing of the attack right before Valentine’s Day, post-holiday ad spend reduction may hurt traffic and revenue for 2011.

I hope that Plentyoffish sister site eVow receives a security audit as well, especially since its a subscription site (not free).

If you’re going to hack a site, why hack a free one and argue with a guy like Markus? Pretty much a lose-lose situation all around.

Photo courtesy of CNET’s At Facebook, defense is offense.

(At Facebook) Taped to the wall are photos of spammers getting served notices of lawsuits, copies of checks defendants have used to settle suits filed by Facebook, mug shots of child predators who were kicked off the site and face criminal charges, cease and desist letters sent to fraudsters who sold fake Facebook accounts, and a letter from a former spam-happy teenager that starts “I appreciate that you spoke to my mom.”

Whereas many dating sites tend to practice somewhat lax security measures, meaning reactive situations like the one with PlentyOfFish, Facebook is fully built on top of strong offensive capabilities. Huge difference.

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