- BY STEPHANIE MLOT
- OCTOBER 30, 2014
JDI Dating created fake profiles and contacted free users in order to get them to sign up for premium accounts.
The Federal Trade Commission is dipping its toe into the online dating pool—but only to sue an English company for creating phony profiles to lure users into paying more.
According to a settlement with the FTC, JDI Dating Ltd. must pay a $616,165 fine, and is now prohibited from using fake, computer-generated profiles to trick users into upgrading to paid memberships. The England-based company is also barred from charging members a recurring monthly fee without their consent.
"JDI Dating used fake profiles to make people think they were hearing from real love interests and to trick them into upgrading to paid memberships," Jessica Rich, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. "Adding insult to injury, users were charged automatically to renew their subscriptions—often without their consent."
The company operates a worldwide dating service via 18 websites, including cupidswand.com, flirtcrowd.com, and findmelove.com.
Once users set up a profile and surf the site on the free plan, they receive messages from members living nearby, expressing a desire to meet. But in order to respond, they had to upgrade to a paid plan, ranging from $10 to $30 for one to 12 months of service.
But according to the FTC, those profiles were bogus - Virtual Cupids developed by JDI. A tiny "v" encircled by a "C" on the profile page was the only indication that the profiles were fake, the agency said, though users were unlikely to notice it, let alone understand what it meant.
So, folks ponied up the cash for a subscription, unaware that their dues would be renewed automatically, and their account charged, until they canceled. The automatic renewal feature was buried, the FTC said, in multiple pages of densely worded text inside the Terms of Conditions—which most people don't read, anyway.
Once the Commission got wind of JDI's practices, it sued, arguing that JDI Dating and owner William Mark Thomas violated the FTC Act by "misrepresenting the source of the communications from fake profiles and failing to disclose the automatic renewal terms."
JDI Dating did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment.
Classmates.com faced a similar lawsuit back in 2008. A San Diego man sued Classmates.com for lying in order to get him to pay for a subscription. He signed up for a free profile in 2007 and subsequently received e-mail alerts that said former classmates were trying to find him. But Classmates.com would not reveal who was looking for him until he signed up for a paid "gold membership" account. When he did—no messages. Classmates.com settled for $9.5 million in 2010.
Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland
No comments:
Post a Comment