With Plentyoffish I constantly write more lines of code to deal with scammers than all other code combined. As a result there isn’t a single media story of someone being scammed by Nigerians on Plentyoffish. Nigerian scamming is a massive business. There are many Nigerian scammers that make a living trying to scam people on paid Dating sites. It doesn’t matter how many background checks Match.com does they will never catch someone using a stolen credit cards and addresses. In the last 6 months these scammers have stepped up their game in a big way and it takes a lot of time and effort to stay ahead of them.
Match.com has got some major publicity in the last 2 weeks. Sounds like these Nigerians are becoming an epidemic.
Match.com User Scammed out of 1 Million.
http://www.globalregina.com/Okanagan+woman+scammed+million+online+dating+scam/5067500/story.html
Match.com user Scammed
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/We_Find_Them/online-dating-nightmare-ny-woman-scammed-thousands-soldier/story?id=13898664
match user scammed for Millions.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2011/07/01/308198/Scammer-cons.htm
Another match scam.
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=213114
Match.com user scammed
http://www.bayofplentytimes.co.nz/have-your-say/news/grandmother-duped-in-dating-scam/3950969/
Match.com scams on ABC News 20/20
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/crime/artikel.php?ID=212375
July 10, 2011 at 9:07 am |
Avoiding the headlines so far is great, but I’m sure it’s not that Match.com aren’t trying. It appears to be a massive problem that’s only going to get worse as more of the ‘third’ world comes online.
July 10, 2011 at 4:06 pm |
Oh its brutal and its non stop. They are all using botnets now which makes it way harder than it used to be. But these kind of headlines are not welcome for the industry.
July 11, 2011 at 12:32 am |
Any thought of creating a scam clearinghouse like stopforumspam.com? It seems like their spammers are a different group than dating scammers.
July 11, 2011 at 4:45 pm |
Most of them are using botnets. You can actually see the scammers rewriting their automated programs every couple of minutes to try something different.
July 13, 2011 at 3:36 am |
Well, what they do at stopforumspam.com which I just started using on my site since Elgg has a plug in for it, is provide an API where your application can query based on IP, email, or username, and if there is a match you can just reject the user registration. That way they have to keep changing IP address or email address to beat it. I’m sure it results in a lot of false positives so they have a process to “clear your name” similar to how email spam blacklists work. So far it seems like romancescam.com has a good database but what is missing are the APIs to automate checking and simplify reporting.
July 16, 2011 at 12:30 pm |
Interesting, as always, Markus
So why do think it is Nigerians who do this?
Why not, say, net savvy North Americans?
July 27, 2011 at 7:45 am |
Because most of the scams are coming from Nigeria or are you saying they are not educated enough
July 29, 2011 at 12:56 am |
Hi Markus,
I just want to know when Ghanaians would be allowd to use your website Plent of Fish? Thanks a lot.
July 30, 2011 at 1:57 am |
never
August 7, 2011 at 1:51 am |
“Dog and the Bone”.
September 26, 2011 at 8:10 pm |
It’s not as though Nigerian scammers don’t have their own site, anyway… http://nigerianscamdating.com/
December 5, 2011 at 9:12 pm |
Why do you have such a bad customer service? I have tried to close my account for three days, many emails to customer care and NO response. PLEASE close:
lolajuanita@aol.com and remove all information.
January 7, 2012 at 6:54 am |
Hey Marcus,
How’s it going. You know who this is and yes, I’m still learning from you. But every great once in awhile the teacher must become the student and the student must step up with a lesson. I have to say that unfortunately this is one of those times.
You’ve done an amazing job on pof and I admit straight forward your extreme limiting of scammers on the site is nothing short of nobel worthy. However, you seem to be ignoring your once glory child that is somehow appearing to become an ugly stepchild at an uncomprehensible pace. Evow.com has the same problem your mentioning here in regards to match.com Can you tell me that this profile is real?
http://www.evow.com/profile.aspx?id=966262&guid=477701&sid=33w5vstlfuakvykpcyq444gi
Everyday on evow it’s the same issues cropping up. Incredibly young and beautiful ladies messaging considerably older men talking at length about going on walks on the beach and undying love with total devotion and so on and so on and so on. Heck Marcus, their profiles alone could be the algorythm. lol
Drop me a note, you know how to catch my attention and I’ll relay you a few more bits here and there that we’ve learned from you and even tweaked a few of our own on this end. Keep up the great work.
January 12, 2012 at 1:52 pm |
The real number might be a lot higher as most people are probably embarrassed to tell anyone…
February 14, 2012 at 4:53 pm |
What is the POF scam where a woman wants me to check out her facebook account for better pictures, and “she just might add me LOL” ??