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NEWS BOSTON -- Dec 12 -- New claims say some of the tempting profiles
you see may really be cyber fakes. David Lemay put his profile on the
web and got a response from an Elle McPherson look alike. David
emailed back, but nothing. New lawsuits claim Match and Yahoo'ssites have posted fake profiles on purpose to lure people into paying
for membership renewals. The complaint lists different potential
daters using the exact same phrases in their profiles--too unique to be
a coincidence. Match.com calls the suit extortion. Mark
Brooks runs "Online Personals Watch." He admits date baiting can happen
but can't believe larger sites do it. "To have a product manager
put the hand up in a meeting and say, 'hey, why don't we put up bogus
emails so we can improve our conversion rates'...they'd get fired."
Brooks says some companies filter out obscene photos and obvious fakes
but they don't make sure postings are real people. Experts think online daters are targeted when their memberships are expiring. FULL NEWS STORY @ 7 NEWS BOSTON VIDEO SEGMENT

Mark Brooks:
Sites will typically bubble up expiring profiles in searches. Nothing
new there. However, product managers, employees, please make sure
to delete test profiles. The profile used in this video looks to
me like a test profile. Not date bait, but a profile that an
employee might put up to test the site. I can see 3rd tier,
one-man-band sites succumbing to the temptation of using date bait to
raise their conversion rates out of the ashes. Match, Yahoo,
nah! I have great respect for these companies and their
integrity. As an industry, I think we need to freeze profiles
from search results that are completely unresponsive after 20
contacts/2 weeks.