Online Personals Watch has an interview with iovation CEO Greg Peirson. Good overview of iovation anti-fraud services. There are also some videos at iovation.com. I have been introducing iovation to dating sites and am pleased with the response so far. Contact me if you would like to set up a brief call to learn more about iovation and how they can help reduce fraud on you dating site or social network. Disclaimer: iovation is an advertiser and a client. I love working with the team, hang out with them whenever they are in Boston and strongly believe in their services. That goes for everyone who advertises here.

Related posts:

1. Lunch with iovation
2. Iovation Coffers Swell to $15 Million
3. iovation, Explained Via Video

Had lunch with Glenn from iovation today. Beautiful fall day here in Boston, perfect for sitting outside and chatting for a few hours. I am seriously getting interested in fraud detection services, lots of interesting solutions, partnerships and deals going on. iovation is clearly on a roll these days and it’s nice to see dating sites acknowledge that their services are capable of reducing fraud, which results in less spammy profiles and makes for a better user experience. Anyone who is starting a dating site should be checking out anti-fraud services, which come in many flavors.

I’ll be posting soon about Sobayli, a client which is doing tremendous work reducing spammy profiles and enabling dating sites to efficiently managing member-created content.

Related posts:

1. Iovation CEO Interview
2. Lunch With iovation
3. iovation, Explained Via Video

Iovation has several videos out that describe how their anti-fraud device fingerprinting technology can benefit various online constituencies.

Financial Services: http://www.iovation.com/videos/fin_video.html
Online Communities: http://www.iovation.com/videos/com_video.html
Online Gambling: http://www.iovation.com/videos/gbl_video.html
Online Retail: http://www.iovation.com/videos/rtl_video.html
Corporate Overview: http://www.iovation.com/videos/corp_video.html

No related posts.

Yesterday I had lunch with Chris and Corey from iovation. A beautiful day to hang out on Boston harbor talking shop while looking at the skyline and boats of all kinds. I enjoy spending time with clients, often times I work with people that I never meet face to face, or only see once a year at conferences.

Today I met with someone who was active and extremely successful in the online dating space circa 2000 and it was interesting to hear stories about what it was like to start a site, achieve success and be acquired back in the day. Inspiration is good.

If you’re in the dating industry and find yourself in Boston, look me up.

No related posts.

Scott Olson, VP marketing at iovation, has written about how easy it is to bypass background checks. Scott outlines precisely why I believe background check and fraud-detection companies should work together. They are pitching their services to the exact same people at dating and social networking companies and should be collaborating and teaming up to create a stronger service offering.

The article is light on details about how to get around background checks, I’d like to hear more about how to actually do this, maybe with an example.

These days I’m feeling more and more like a B2B matchmaker in the dating and social networking space.

Disclaimer: iovation is a advertiser and a client.

Related posts:

1. Fueling the Rumor Mill: Dating Site Background Checks
2. Online Dating Site Does Criminal Background Checks
3. Mainstream Media Best Marketing for Background Checks

The next few posts are going out in an attempt to post things that have been stuck in my draft folder.

My notes from a recent iovation presentation. iovation is a new sponsor of the blog and we’re glad to have them on board.

Fraud and abuse in idating spammers and scammers, how they affect online dating.

Fastest growing threat.
Scammer becoming highly sophisticated.
Threshold to create accounts is low.
Member trust is critical.
Device identification becomes missing link.

iovation allows you to see relationship between accounts and devices, increasing ability to identify scams and see all associated accounts likely to do this in the future.
Block account creation from device.
Learn from experience of community peers.

My questions: How open are dating sites to sharing information?
Desire to protect good customers. Do not collect personal information. idating sites excited to share information.

Avoid personally identifiable information concerns because iovation doesn’t collect any personal information.

What about personal reputation?
A strong possible component for date-rating sites, complimentary service.

What about adjudication?
Members engages in personal communication with site. iovation provides supporting information. Happens infrequently.

Scenario: I got a laptop on ebay that was blacklisted by iovation. Iovation provides a mechanism to allow partners to make exceptions based on past history.

Not a replacement for identity based fraud tools.

Dating site case study
Blocked 46k accounts and 12k devices in a month. checked 12M device reputation check requests per month. Zero complaints from good members.

Improve operations efficiencies
Processes 3M device reputations per month. Reduced number of accounts that required review.

Key benefits to idating sites: Improved business efficiencies and reduced operational costs.

No related posts.

Recently I had a great lunch with Brad Canavan at Iovation. I had to meet with a guy who’s email signature is “The Wizard of Odds.” Reading the Iovation newsletter, I see its now public knowledge that Iovation has completed a $15 Million Investment round. Capital came from SAP Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of SAP, and European Founders, a leading investor for emerging growth companies looking to expand into Europe. The two companies join Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment group, as iovation’s initial group of investors.

Iovation also announced a partnership with PayByCash to offer eMerchants protection against payment and credit card fraud.

My notes from an Iovation webinar.

I’ve done a pretty deep dive into how Iovation can help your company reduce web-based transactional fraud. Contact me if you want to learn more.

Hopefully I’ll run into Brad at tonight’s Web Innovators group, where 400+ Boston Internet folks get together to see a few demos, drink beer and network.

No related posts.

Given the important role fraud detection plays in the idating market, I expected the iovation webinar to be packed. Perhaps school vacation week got the best of people’s schedules. A transcript of the event will be posted and I’ll try to link to it here.

My notes from the presentation:

Fraud and abuse in idating spammers and scammers, how they affect online dating.

Fastest growing threat.
Scammer becoming highly sophisticated.
Threshold to create accounts is low.
Member trust is critical.
Device identification becomes missing link.

iovation allows you to see relationship between accounts and devices, increasing ability to identify scams and see all associated accounts likely to do this in the future.
Block account creation from device.
Learn from experience of community peers.

My questions: How open are dating sites to sharing information?
Desire to protect good customers. Do not collect personal information. idating sites excited to share information.

Avoid personally identifiable information concerns because iovation doesn’t collect any personal information.

What about personal reputation?
A strong possible component for date-rating sites, complimentary service.

What about adjudication?
Members engages in personal communication with site. iovation provides supporting information. Happens infrequently.

Scenario: I got a laptop on ebay that was blacklisted by iovation. Iovation provides a mechanism to allow partners to make exceptions based on past history.

Not a replacement for identity based fraud tools.

Dating site case study
Blocked 46k accounts and 12k devices in a month. checked 12M device reputation check requests per month. Zero complaints from good members.

Improve operations efficiencies
Processes 3M device reputations per month. Reduced number of accounts that required review.

Key benefits to idating sites: Improved business efficiencies and reduced operational costs.

No related posts.

Lot’s going on today. First up, the iovation iDate wrapup webinar at 2PM EST, the Spark Networks investor call at 4:30PM EST, followed by the Matchmaking Institute Cupid system demo, at 5PM EST.

Related posts:

1. Spark financials, iDate wrapup, Matchmaking demo
2. Spark financials, iDate wrapup, Matchmaking demo
3. Skout Presenting at Demo Today at 2:30PM PST

Lot’s going on today. First up, the iovation iDate wrapup webinar at 2PM EST, the Spark Networks investor call at 4:30PM EST, followed by the Matchmaking Institute Cupid system demo, at 5PM EST.

Related posts:

1. Spark financials, iDate wrapup, Matchmaking demo
2. Spark financials, iDate wrapup, Matchmaking demo
3. Skout Presenting at Demo Today at 2:30PM PST