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March 21st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Online dating may be complicated, but California and three industry leaders are aiming to make it safer.
The state attorney general’s office announced this week it will work with Match.com, eHarmony.com and Spark Networks to screen for sexual predators, identity thieves and scammers. A joint statement issued Monday notes the prevalence of online dating and says the companies’ main objective is to keep users safe.
[More from Mashable: Why Zoosk Wants to Make Online Dating More Like LinkedIn]
“Consumers should be able to use websites without the fear of being scammed or targeted,” California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris said in a press statement.
The statement is not an enforceable set of regulations the sites must follow by law, but an official agreement between the attorney general’s office and three major sites that share the same goal of protecting online daters. It also says the guidelines should serve as a model for other online dating websites.
[More from Mashable: Online Dating: 7 Fun New Sites for Finding Your Match]
A Match.com spokesperson told Mashable the site is already taking the precautions outlined in the agreement, and an eHarmony spokesperson said existing screening mechanisms have helped keep sex offenders off the service in the past. A press release about the statement says all the sites involved will “continue their efforts to screen members for safety threats.”
The sites will protect users from predators through education, online safety tools and cooperation with law enforcement. Here are a few of the steps being taken to keep members safe:
- Sites will provide safety tips for meeting someone in person.
- Sites may send customers emails warning them about the latest online financial scams.
- Sites will review profiles (either automatically or manually) to find fake profiles that may be linked to financial scammers.
- Sexual predators will be identified when requisite information is available, and removed from fee-based services.
- Sites will maintain rapid abuse-reporting systems that allows users access to “a website, email address and/or phone number to report any suspected criminal activity, including physical safety concerns and fraud.”
The statement also says dating sites should make clear to members that screenings cannot filter out all dangerous characters, and ultimately every user is responsible for their own safety. However, the attorney general and the three sites say they will meet regularly to discuss how to create stronger identity theft protections and online safety tools.
Last April, a woman named Carole Markin went public with accusations that a man she met on Match.com in 2010 sexually assaulted her on their second date. The man, a registered sex offender, pleaded “no contest” to felony sexual battery by restraint in August of last year. Markin also filed a civil suit against Match.com, which she dropped after the site soon said it would check all members against the National Sex Offender Registry.
“In 2011, 40 million Americans used an online dating service and spent more than $1 billion on online dating website memberships,” says the California attorney general’s office press release on the new agreement. “Of couples married in the last three years, one in six met through an online dating service and one in five people have dated someone they met through an online dating site.”
Do you use online dating services? Have you had dangerous experiences? Tell us in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, JamesBrey
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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