One day before Valentine’s Day, Computerworld put out a terrific article focused on the technology used in the online dating industry, an industry growing 10% annually according to Forrester Research. This is timely news as the highest demand for internet dating sites comes just before Valentine’s Day, when most sites double their traffic, if not quadruple it.  In the article, titled “Online Dating: The Technology Behind the Attraction,” editor Robert Mitchell outlines four basic and necessary steps for the online dating business model:

1. Provide visitors with instant feedback (or matches)
2. Convert visitors from “Just Looking” to “Paid Customers”
3. Deliver high quality connections or matches
4. Keep the quality of the prospect pool high, by weeding out scammers, spammers and fraudsters.

Number four is where iovation comes in.  When we compiled all incidents in our worldwide database from online dating sites that use our services, we found that the top 5 types of abuse on online dating sites are:

1. Identity mining/phishing &/or credit card fraud – 61%
2. Spammers – 14%
3. Profile Misrepresentation – 7.6%
4. General Misconduct – 5.9%
5. Solicitation – 2.9%

Computerworld launched a separate article on February 13th featuring iovation’s technology, titled, “Online Dating: Blocking the Bad Guys”.  Read this article to find out how iovation’s ReputationManager service aims to help online dating sites keep the scammers and spammers at bay.

- Scott Olson, VP of Marketing, iovation

Tags: ID theft, idating fraud, online dating scam, online solicitations, romance schemes

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Online Communities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.