Fraud in Internet Dating Prompting Regulation 371
anaesthetica writes "According to the Washington Post, an increasing tide of fraud in internet dating is prompting lawyers and lawmakers to examine possible regulations and consumer protections. Wire fraud scamming, plane ticket ripoffs, fraud perpetrated to fund trysts, fake "date bait" messages -- these are just a few of the issues the courts are beginning to deal with. Dating websites were immunized from lawsuits over false statements by the recent Communications Decency Act. Other attempts to regulate internet dating, such as the 2005 'mail-order bride' legislation, are already being challenged in court, but an increasing number of states are sponsoring their own legislation."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
We should pass a law against this kind of behavior...
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Re:this is legislating from the bench (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you actually knew anything about the subject you're spouting insane nonsense about you wouldn't have wasted those electrons.
The fundamental difference that set America apart from England and all other countries is the separation of Church and State. England has a state church, we don't. Out laws are not based in any way whatsoever on any sort of religious beliefs. That's what made us so cool back in the day.
So now, we have these extremist fundamentalist nutjobs shoving this historical revisionism asshattery because they're too cowardly to deal with a free society.
If you want to live in a theocracy, move the Saudi Arabia. That's where they live under your desired system.
If you choose not to do so, think about why exactly that is and quit trying to bring that diseased type of system here.
Re:this is legislating from the bench (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Activist judges" (Score:3, Insightful)
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
-Ninth Ammendment to the Constitution
Just because the founding fathers didn't list medical privacy as a right, doesn't mean that it isn't a fundamental right in
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
So let's vote in some libertarians to strike all the useless laws and 99% of the tax code, and put some lawyers out of business while we're at it.
We can call it "ex-lex".
Re:Libertarianism (Score:4, Interesting)
So I think there's a reasonable example that libertarianism can work well.
I think it's a good idea for government to handle things that are truly public goods, like roads, because it is just too burdensome to pay every time you drive somewhere.
But I'd love all schools to be private. I think there would be much higher quality education overall if that was the case. Parents who have to pay feel they have some control and "skin in the game", which is not true of today's public schools. Before public schools this was still a very well-educated country, because parents as a general rule are willing to sacrifice for their kids and pay.
D
Re:Libertarianism (Score:5, Informative)
As a Hong Kong native, I have enjoyed multitudes of social services, including free health care, free public schools (K-12, although you buy your own cheap textbooks), the best public transportation system in the world, parents with unspeakably generous government pension benefits, you name it.
Here's the grand slam - My Father-in-law got a all-expense-paid 14-day trip to Europe as a 20-year-anniversary present from his employer - the Hong Kong government; Imagine something like that in the States.
All this happened during the colonial administration, and is still going on today without too many drastic changes under Chinese administration (well, except they've actually scaled down the government employee benefits, if you can believe it).
So Hong Kong is hardly a shiny example of a libertarian paradise. It can provide social services despite the low taxes it levies (15% flat tax last I remember) because it is flush with money from being one of the great financial centers in Asia.
Re:Libertarianism (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with the libertarian approach is simply that the school isn't making the decision whether the child goes to school - the parent is making that decision. There are a lot of very good children that come
Re:Libertarianism (Score:4, Informative)
The issue isn't public vs. private schools - it's an ingrained dependence on the Carnegie school system which is designed to pump out factory workers. 'Grade levels' are a convenient (but artificial) way to sort students out by age, but all students are not capable of learning the same things at the same age.
A private school that recognizes this and teaches to appropriate educational standards could be wildly successful. Unfortunately, in public schools, advancing students is just as much a political issue between parents and the school ["Johnny's repeating the 10th grade? Expect a call from our lawyer."]. If one early step in education fails, then a student will be behind for the rest of their educational career. Why bother trying to teach the multiplication of fractions to a student who has not yet grasped the basics of multiplication, or fractions?
So in short, I agree with you that private schools may be the way forward, but for different reasons which I hope everyone will consider.
motivation of politicans (Score:2)
How many were "burnt" (=shot) by easy to get fire arms?
How many were "burnt" by the RIAA / MPAA?
How many were "burnt" by DRM?
How many were "burnt" by software companies that are not liable for the damages their software caused?
I mentioned weapons
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Funny)
You misspelled make.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Immigration is mostly an example of the same (Score:5, Informative)
rather than issues like balancing the budget, fixing levees, or fixing the immigration problems we have.
Immigration sticks out as the crossover from your list. Pretty clearly the Repubs were trying to pony up immigration reform as this year's Gay Marriage Amendment: the social wedge issue that would continue to let them play Nixon's "southern strategy" this time around. The "illegal immigration should be a felony" thing was all about that. The grenade went off in their hands a bit, and now they're back to the gay marriage thing as a fallback position.
My Southern Baptist relatives down in Oklahoma would vote for any politician who passed legislation about some sort of "fraud" involving white girls being misled by black men. Seriously. All you have to do is throw them a bone like that, and they're motivated. Politicians know it, just take a look at their Senator Coburn. It's spooky.
Immigration: the Republicans' big "oops." (Score:5, Insightful)
Grenades work better when you can agree which direction you're going to throw it in before you pull the pin.
On the bright side, it made it abundantly clear who was actually listening to their constituency and who was listening to their donors, though. It's good to get an issue every once in a while that clarifies things like that.
"internet dating"=oxymoron? (Score:2)
So who is the legislation supposed to protect? People from themselves? ...Because they don't realize that "find your perfect soulmate for $39.99 a month" or "find a hot chick to bang tonight" are too good to be true. Let people live in their fantasy world where everyone has a soulmate and there are plenty of hot local babes" willing to please, just a few mouse click away and $5.99 registration fee.
Re:"internet dating"=oxymoron? (Score:2)
I think people project their own idealized image of a soulmate unto the other individual they meet online. It is very easy to do when you only see their typing and a picture of them 10 years (and 50 lb.) ago. I am not saying people don't do it in person too, it'
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
re: online dating and "perfect soulmates" (Score:3, Interesting)
college doesn't count (Score:3, Informative)
I didn't online date in college either; it's damned easy to meet people and the shared experience makes the whole "dating game" trivial.
But it's still happening online - not with formal dating services but Facebook, and (for younger) MySpace and its amalgams are how many people are meeting at this point.
The difference is (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the fastest way to get Congress to act on something: show that it affects women as well as men.
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
What's being described here is already illegal, but the laws are difficult to enforce online. They are not proposing making these kinds of fraud illegal, but putting regulations on the "middle-men" (the dating sites) to make it harder for criminals to get away with it.
However, the fact remains that it should be the -perpetrators- punished for the crime, not the sites on which they commit them. (This is a different story if the site itself commits fraud, of course, and "Find a hot chick to bang tonight!"
blah blah election year nothing to see here! (Score:4, Informative)
this is yet another potential grand stand style red herring politicians can use to distract you from real issues.
I hope I saved you a lot of time you would have spent inquiring further into this.
Re:blah blah election year nothing to see here! (Score:2)
That's right ... we need to get back to the real issues. Like gay marriage!
Re:blah blah election year nothing to see here! (Score:2)
Re:blah blah election year nothing to see here! (Score:2)
They're super depressing!
actually no... (Score:2)
common sense is quite a valuable tool, it is free and available to all, just have to reach for it and use it - simple as that!
Too bad it languishes in the tool-box. (Score:2)
I still can't believe people thought the Iraq war and rebuilding of Iraq was protecting the USA, that it was even possible to pull off and that it was ethical.
Re:blah blah erection year nothing to see here! (Score:2)
Think about it (Score:3, Insightful)
"Bald ugly pervert seeks quick poke" (Score:2)
Nobody ever got prosecuted for wire fraud for embellishing to potential dates over the phone or by any othger means. Using the internet does not really change anything.
Re:Think about it (Score:3, Insightful)
A bunch of idiots got fooled by another bunch of (slightly smarter) idiots with a website, that they can find their "soul mates" and consequently a "happy married life" for a $5.99 membership fee. In the end they found out that the "hot local babes" are just pictures from pr0n sites and it was actually the employees of the website who replied back to them. This made them realize that their own little world where they a
Re:Think about it (Score:2)
What dating site are you going to that they only charge $5.99? With the exception of the completely free ones (Plenty of Fish, OKCupid, etc) they all charge a minimum of $20/month. Granted, you don't have to pay the fee but if you want to talk with someone or, in the case of Match, even find out who's looked at your profile or sent you an email, you have to pay.
Re:Think about it (Score:3, Interesting)
So, pray tell, when was exactly that glorious time when common sense did prevail? Did it coincide with the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witch burnings? Or perhaps with slavery?
As mad as the world is right now, the strange fact is that it has never been more sane.
Re:Think about it (Score:2)
Worrying, isn't it.
Re:Think about it (Score:2)
Worrying, isn't it.
Actually, no, it's pretty comforting. Despite the fact that people were even more nutty previously than they are today, we have come this far. That should really instill some hope for the future.
And no, I'm not sarcastic. I really do think this is the case.
Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
And to think there is still no budget for the public school system down here (we've been bickering about it since our supreme court struck down the curring Robin Hood system about... 1, 2 years ago?)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Got an article?
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
But why would you need to use cash if you can get a low interest subsidized loan?
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
On a related note, I was behind Carol Keaton Strayhorn's red Suburban the other day. She drove slightly below the speed limit, but turned out of my way fairly quickly. I think I'll vote for her.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
I'll probably vote for Kinky. Seriously, getting someone like him in office is the only way there would by any chance of changing the status quo.
And you're right - it would be fun as hell!
Obligatory (Score:2)
What? (Score:5, Funny)
Who would want to date when you can play Dungeons and Dragons?
Anyway, doesn't everyone here know that all the cute pictures online are fake and you are talking to somebody who weighs 300 pounds and whose real name is "Bubba"?
Re:What? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:2)
Re:What? (Score:2)
Reminds me of the classic quote: "Ah, the internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents."
With regulation, dating sites will look like this: (Score:5, Funny)
His Qualities
Your Qualities
Re:With regulation, dating sites will look like th (Score:2)
There seems to be a great many of their number in the
More useless hype ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More useless hype ... (Score:3, Funny)
funny (Score:3, Funny)
I consulted on a case of this. (Score:5, Insightful)
The client sued a dating site because he saw a profile (faked), joined, chatted for 2 hours,
then "she" gave him a get lost jerk phone number.
In discovery, the email address given by this "woman" was phony.
While the dating site is protected under the CDA (see http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2003/200
a case against a site for failing to do a basic check of the email address and removal of a phony profile. That by not checking, the dating site gets an unfair benefit from the deceptive information posted -- a person being tricked into paying a fee to contact the person in the fake profile.
Re:I consulted on a case of this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I consulted on a case of this. (Score:2)
The person in question paid money to the service, having been lured in by a profile which turned out to be fake. It's not about the fake phone number or getting scammed by the other person. The issue is that the dating service profited from a fake profile. That goes against the very idea of the service they supposedly provide.
There was another service (don't remember which one) which made headlines when it started hiring people to flirt with and talk up members of the opposit
Then it's badly explained (Score:4, Insightful)
1. That the site itself created false profiles to seem populated. That's fraud.
2. That some member put in a false address on their own profile just because they _don't_ want to be stalked, spammed, or have their identity stolen for character assassination purposes as retaliation by some cretin who can't deal with rejection. This is just having a brain. The sheer number of idiots out there is truly frightening, and these sites _also_ act like the wrong kind of a filter by mainly attracting those who are too socially-retarded to find a date any other way. So anyone who put any true personal info on a site that'll give it unquestioningly to every horny Tom, Dick and Harry, I'd consider them genuinely and truly retarded.
So is it some guy that was scammed by the site owners, _or_ some socially-retarded guy who's angered that he can't stalk the girl who dared refuse him? They're very very different cases. So as long as we aren't told which of them it is, I won't hurry to join in the angry mob with torches and pitchforks.
In fact, the way the original post was phrased, it sounded like getting a false email was _the_ grand fraud. Not even "proof" of fraud, but as being the grand despicable act of deception itself. That the site should have made sure the guy only gets genuine email addresses for his money.
In which case, I'm left scratching my head: exactly what the fuck was he actually expecting to get on that site? Did he think he was buying a list of verified email addresses, like on some spammers' sites? Or what? The site only promised to put him in contact with another person, nothing more. As long as they did that (or at least he can't prove that they didn't), it seems to me like they're perfectly in the clear. They didn't promise to sell him someone's verified personal data.
On the whole, it looks more and more like an idiot who can't deal with rejection than anything else. Read the whole thing again. Starting with the whole flipping out and trying to sue the site after the very first rejection. There is no mention of trying to gather more proof or anything. (E.g., you know, trying to chat to more than one person just to see if all conversations follow the same bait-and-dump script or what. Or trying to see if more people run into the same kind of a problem. Surely he's not the only one who talked to a staff member in disguise, if that's the case.) And continuing with the not-so-veiled quotes all over the place ("she", "woman", etc) implying that it must have been a guy, although, again, there was no finding or even an actual case.
Seriously, the more I look at it, the more it looks like a very good possibility that it's just a clown who'd do anything rather than admit that someone rejected him. He's scream fraud, he'll scream that it must have been a man in disguise, anyting. Because god forbid admitting that maybe, just maybe, a woman could have actually rejected him.
Of course, I can't know that either, but it's a distinct possibility.
Re:I consulted on a case of this. (Score:4, Informative)
do a test, create an account on their site, but don't put ANY personal information, bare minimum.. wait a week and check how many flirts you get from women..
As a control, you can also create the profile for "Ima Lyon-Bastard", or similar.
I can't remember which sites I tested it on, but I signed up for about a dozen free memberships using a disposable Dodgeit.com mail drop, and created a profile accurate about age and location — but used a poverty-line income, the psychological profile of a sociopath ("Hobbies: torturing puppies, kittens, and bunnies"), and repeated notes on the lines of "This is a bogus profile; no contacts will be acknowleged or responded to". One site killed the account inside 3 days, and one let it just sit there.... but I got a couple dozen "enthusiastic" flirting responses apiece within a week from all of the others.
I doubt section 230 immunity stretches to covering cases where an employee of the dating service is responsible for the shell script creating the responses....
Bring on National IDs and USDA Inspectors (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bring on National IDs and USDA Inspectors (Score:4, Funny)
Let the market decide (Score:3, Insightful)
Let the free market figure it out!
For example, if Yahoo dating service is able to block 98% of scammers, while Match.com is only able to block 75%, then who should win?
The answer lies within filtering technology, and innovating approaches to improving the quality of service. The market will sort things out on its own; that will force innovation (progress) and foster competition.
Regulation and legislation usually stifles competition and innovation. If people can't get good service at one place, they will go to somewhere else that meets their needs. That is called the free market!
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
If more than 50% of viruses are on Windows, and less than that are on anything else, who should win? The free market is broken, at least with goods/services where more than one marketable factor is involved... (which is most)
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2, Insightful)
In your Windoze analogy it should be obvious that viruii are not enough of a problem for people to start switching to Linux or Mac OS based solely on the amount of viruii they contract. As soon as viruii become a huge problem, then people might either fix it (AV companies anyone), or decide to move to a less vulnerable OS. It is really a cost-benefit analysis.
Re:Let the market decide (Score:3, Insightful)
It is the free market, and it does work. Like gravity, it is a natural law and always functions with specific parameters.
That's the stupidest goddamn thing I've read all day. The free market is an illusion. Something invented by people. There is no Santa Claus, there is no spoon, and there is no fucking free market.
Fundie Christians have Jesus and libertarians have the free market. Yay for humanity.
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
This is what I meant by "when more than one marketable factor is involved". No one's paying attention to the greater virus vunerability, because there are plenty of other things to worry about. I picked Windows for my analogy because many of the reasons people won't switch (established user base, exclusive content) could
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
Okay, now what if they're both only able to block 1% (+/- 1% false positives)?
I guess we'll just let the free market's panacea of just-short-of-fraudulent marketing fix everything.
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
A "perfect market" - the kind of market that goes in there and sorts things out, optimally - requires that all actors are perfectly rational and have perfect information, and that there are no transaction costs. I don't know about you, but I'm definately not rational. Oh, and while I'm a quick shopper, I'm not instant. Fortunately, I'm clairvoiant, so that part is taken care of - the labels may be a bad idea after all. They just help all you nor
Re:Let the market decide (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it USUALLY doesn't.
The real question here, which you are conveniently ignoring like oh-so-many Republican politicians, is HOW LONG will this "one place" be able to scam their customers, fooling them into believing they ARE getting "good service" before they figure out it's all a big scam/hoax?
Re:Let the market decide (Score:3, Insightful)
Additionally, it's too damn easy to spread false information via astroturfing when people are depending on word of mouth to determine whic
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
One n00b conversation scenario:
Hello.
>Hi.
How are you doing?
>Great! How about you? I like your profile p
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
Let the free market figure it out!
For example, if Yahoo dating service is able to block 98% of scammers, while Match.com is only able to block 75%, then who should win?
Whoever's got the most pretty shinny flashing pictures on their front page.
Free market my backside. You're assuming the free market, in this case made up of socially inept losers and naive twits, is going to rationally and wisely choose the best service offered. That is just one of the many problems with letting a free ma
Idealism is a trap. (Score:4, Insightful)
This really is a noble idea, but like many such ideas, it is far too simple to work all by itself. There is nothing inherently wrong with regulation; it's just mindful engineering. Many systems, if you don't apply intelligence and sculpting to their growth progress, will just end up being wild free-for-alls which do not necessarily favor humans. This is why farmers try to discourage weed growth among their crops. Our intelligence is a tool designed to give us an edge in the wild; ignoring it needlessly strips us of that advantage. Sorry, but I don't have claws and fur, so why on earth would I want to handicap myself?
--I remember while visiting Orlando, and Buffalo and a few other U.S. cities, and being amazed at the apparent lack of zoning laws. The cities were a total mess. Industry and housing and retail sectors were all mixed together. I saw nasty chemical plants next to schools, next to gun shops, next to more housing, next to burned out housing. . . It was insane and stressful and totally unnecessary. --Yes, it made the ideologues happy because some high-minded theory about evolution or something was being adhered to, but the result were stupid cities which were uncomfortable and stressful to live in.
Humans have the ability to measure the effectiveness of systems and employ tactics to increase efficiency. --Yes, free market economies are a good base-line for allowing natural efficiencies to take hold, but so are implementing required standards, -for example, the the legally imposed engineering standards placed on boiler manufacture during the steam age when faulty or stupidly made engines exploded on a regular basis. --The free market may have in time have come around to building safe boilers all on its own, but things got a lot safer for the populace almost immediately when the public decided to make it illegal for companies to build lethal steam-bombs masquerading as engines.
Free market economics is one tool, and while it sometimes works, as with all tools, it also sometimes fails miserably. Why get upset when other tools are suggested? You can't solve every problem with a hammer. Sometimes a drill, or a screwdriver, or a piece of sandpaper are better fits for a problem. More often than not, all the tools used in concert in an intelligent manner turn out the best results.
I for one am glad that bridge designs need to meet certain critical standards before cars are allowed to cross and that we don't have to wait around for the stupid companies to be weeded out through economic failure due to their bridges collapsing some percentage of the time.
Of course, it is true that regulation through government bodies can and does also cause big problems, but those problems stem from stupidity and greed rather than an inherent flaw in the style of solution. Regulation can stifle creativity, but the Free Market model allows for unnecessary dangers to the population. Human Intelligence is the stuff we use to balance out the difference.
-FL
Re:Let the market decide (Score:3, Insightful)
The one who doesn't get caught.
The Beloved Free Market isn't about giving people the better product, it's about giving people what they think is the better product. And, in case you haven't noticed, people are fucking morons. And if you have the resources to make people think, contrary to the facts, that your product is better/safer/etc, you'll make your sale.
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
The theoretical ideal of the "Free Market" is dependent on the theoretical ideal of "Perfect information [wikipedia.org]." Having the correct information ("the facts") about the products will
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
Re:Let the market decide (Score:2)
In the real world, a truly free market rewards scams and sheisters. Set up shop, build up a customer base, then suddenly screw everyone and disappear to start another company. It's far more profitable than actually servicing your customers.
Oh you don't want people to do that? How is that then a "free" market without any regulation?
People keep saying they want a free market with zero regulation, except what they mean is they want a free market with no regulation except for those regu
ISO constituent (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory bash.org quote. (Score:5, Funny)
(Paraphrased)
My view as an international matchmaker (Score:3, Informative)
The problem here in Thailand is not that most Thai girls are bad. It is that most are so nice, and shy, and not very open about showing their photo on the internet, or too shy to actually make contact with a foreigner even if they really want to. The scammers are a small but aggressive and active fraction of the population. So the scammers end up being a large fraction of the Thai ladies meet-able online.
The typical westerner vacationing in Thailand cannot easily tell the difference from a nice local girl and a scammer. But I can spot them instantly as can every other Thai person.
But even without local knowledge the average foreigner can just use their head a little. When that sweet little thing you met online starts asking for money, or plane tickets, or other big ticket items then it is pretty obvious you are being scammed, isn't it? What's the point of yet more legislation?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:My view as an international matchmaker (Score:4, Interesting)
How is a girl who asks for money becuase she wants money a "scam"? If that is what we all shuold be protected from, we are truly doomed...
Photos (Score:3, Funny)
IMBRA was a MAJOR fuck-up (Score:5, Informative)
The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 has the following requirements
on websites that bring American men and foreign women together:
Some of those requirements are reasonable - but (1) and (2) are absolutely nuts. Simply chatting with, or even sending a simple note to, a woman means that a guy has to give out way more information than he would ever give out to a woman he just met in a bar or other similar 'dating' situation.
The background information includes things like details of part marriages, names and ages of any children, his current address and full name, etc. The kind of information that fraudsters and identity thieves would just love to get their hands on.
Furthermore, there is no recriprocation - the woman are under no obligation to provide any verifiable information at all to the men.
The law goes so far as to try to impose itself on all 'international' dating websites, even if the ownership is 100% non-American and are hosted outside of the US. The enforcement mechanism is to deny marriage visas to any woman who admits to meeting her American husband or husband-to-be through a website that has not officially adopted the rules and been certified by some sort of quasi-governmental certification authority.
Unfortunately, it really doesn't help all the honest Joes out there that most of the websites that discuss the IMBRA are laden with misogyny, using terms like "feminazi" that are really self-labels for the writers as probably not being fit to marry a woman - American or otherwise.
Re:IMBRA was a MAJOR fuck-up (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:IMBRA was a MAJOR fuck-up (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a little background on why this happened. There was a rather infamous so-called "mail order bride" murder in Washington state in late 2000. An American man living there went to Krygystan to meet an ethnic Russian girl, probably in 1999 I think. He was in his late 30's, fat, balding and extremely unattractive. The girl he met was in her very early 20s and looked like a budding supermodel. In short, there was no way at all she would be interested in him. He had previously married a Russian woman who divorced him and took him to the cleaners. So being an idiot, he decided that he would get a woman much younger and hotter than he deserved and she would be so desperate to leave her country (by the way, Russians are a minority in Krygystan, which is an important fact in the story) that she would marry him. Plus, in his delusional state, he honestly believed that his sparkling personalty would triump and this woman would fall in love with him and they would live together happily ever after.
He went to Krygystan because he knew that since Russians are a minitory there, a girl from there might be pretty willing to leave and overlook his ugliness and this guy was REALLY ugly. What he didn't count on was that she and her parents hatched a plan that she would list herself on the internet with marriage agencies and she would marry the first guy to come along. It was a long shot because only about 5% of the women on these sites ever find a husband this way and the odds of someone in Krygystan are even lower. However, sure enough, the guy wrote to her and came to visit. The plan was that she would come over to America on a K-1 (fiancee) visa, they would get married and if the marriage worked out, great. If not, she would stay in it for 2 years, get her green card, divorce him and then after a few more years apply for American citizenship and then sponsor her parents for immigration. The plan was not ever for her to have a successful marriage. If that happened that was great, but the plan was for her to legally immigrate and then sponsor her parents to immigrate as soon as she became a citizen. So you see already we have a dishonest young woman whose motivation for marriage is to get the hell out of her country.
What she didn't count on was that her future husband was just as dishonest. Instead of having his own house and a good job like he told her, he lived in a rented house and barely got by. His first wife cleaned him out and he had basically almost nothing left as I said earlier. They got married quickly after this young lady arrived in America and when she found out that she had been lied to, she began to sleep around on him and didn't do much to hide it. The marriage went downhill quickly and at some point, he woke up and realized that after she got her green card (it takes at least 2 years of marriage to the person who applied for the K-1 visa before the green card is given), she was going to divorce him. He didn't feel like he could go through that again, so he hired someone to kill her. Her body was found and he was sent away to prison for life.
So if you're still with me, we have a story of two dishonest people who found each other and it ended in the death of one and the imprisonment of the other. To make things worse, the young lady's parents used every excuse in the book to try to exploit her death to be allowed to immigrate to America. They were not successful.
Now you're wondering, how on earth did this tale of 2 dishonest people lead to the IMBRA? Well, some of the Washington press told the truth about the story and mentioned how the young lady was having affairs on her husband. Most did not. It makes a better story to ignore that and paint her as an innocent victim who did nothing wrong and was killed by an American wacko. Now enter some Congresswoman
marrying somebody you've never met (Score:2)
Anybody who decides to MARRY somebody they've never met before, ESPECIALLY if they are outside of driving distance is an idiot.
A "little" and I mean "little" common sense can go a LOOOOONG way. Most bogus profiles can be spotted a mile away. Also..anybody who is from Eastern Europe, Russia, is HOT and writes you an email that has non-specific information riddled through it can go in the trash.
Best of three (Score:3, Insightful)
Single
Mentally stable
Re:Best of three (Score:2, Insightful)
Dear politicians, from a dating site user, (Score:4, Insightful)
Go back to your home towns and find a school's bake sale to help run. Stop legislating your way into every goddamn nook and cranny of everybody's lives. While you're at it, how about repealing some other regulations, since you've already gone too far?
Experience (Score:3, Interesting)
Women most often lie about weight
Men, it seems, most often lie about being married.
If you want to read the worst internet date ever
The Worst Date Ever For An Apple Tech [fixyourthinking.com]
Hmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
You know that's probably the reason this bill is being introduced.
Just like you can't service pack stupidity away... (Score:2)
If you don't have the sense to sniff out a phony, you shouldn't be dating at all, much less attempting long-distance hookups over the internet.
~Philly
PS - I'm glad the government won the war on terror, cleaned up the mess in Iraq, and finished rebuilding New Orleans so we can finally focus on the evil-doers who lie in online personal ads.
Fraud goes both ways - (Score:4, Insightful)
True.com (Score:2)
Anyway, I'm on OkCupid as it is free, and thought I'd see if True was free. IT IS NOT! They indicate in no way shape or form that it costs money until after you enter personal information at which time they will spam the living hell out of you. Your profile will get tons of winks or whatever the fuck system they use in an attempt to l
Dating site fraud... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Create a free profile. Do not accept the offer for a "free trial period", just join, put in your age and city, etc. Fill out as much of the rest of the form as you like, but to get the most out of this experiment, I recommend that you do not upload a photo.
2. Wait.
3. After about a week, you will start getting "winks" or "smiles" or whatever they call them on your chosen website. They will all be from women at or near the minimum age you put in your "who I'm looking for" criteria, they will have cute but not unbelievable pictures, and may or may not have their profile information filled out. Occasionally, despite not having your own picture uploaded, you will get a wink that says, "I liked your photo" or something similar.
In order to reply to these "winks", you have to join the site. Sound fishy?