Some sex dating websites have gotten into hot water because they are accused of having tons of fake profiles. Since we have been running both dating websites and sex dating sites for a very long time, about 15 years, I thought I'd weigh in on the situation.
In truth, any dating site has some percentage of fake member profiles and those profiles are of two basic types. There are fake profiles generated by, or purchased by the website owner, and there are fake profiles posted by site visitors. Today we'll look at the ones generated by the website's staff.
Here's the scenario that leads to dating website owners to generating fake members.
If you have a dating website, you rely on visitors to make you money, either through paying sign up fees, or by showing them advertisements on your sites. To get visitors you have to have lots of members in your database, and there have to be members in all of the cities
in towns where your site visitors search. If a visitor does not find any profiles from singles in his or her area, the visitor will not sign up. So, in order to entice new members to sign up for their service, many webmasters make fake profiles for fictitious members that live in areas where visitors search but few actual members exist. This is what is alleged to have happened at Ashley Madison, where an employee was fired because she was unable to make enough fake profiles. The fake profiles simply increase the number of matches to a search, and the more people there are with whom the prospective member might meet, the more likely he or she is to sign up. This is most likely to happen in sites where you have to pay to sign up, not in the free dating Websites.
Dating sites may also generate fake profiles to motivate free members to become paying members. In these systems, new members are allowed to search and browse the existing member database for free after filling in a simple signing up form. At the free membership level, members are not allowed to communicate with their desired mates until they upgrade to a paying membership. If the new member does not see any prospective matches, he/she won't pay to upgrade. If a new member does not upgrade his/her membership within about a day of signing up for free, the website administration, may employ fake profiles to send personal messages to the free member. These messages are intended to make the free member think that other members are interested in meeting. In order for the free member to communicate with the interested member (the fake one), he/she must upgrade to a paying membership. Once the member begins to pay for his/her membership, the fake member simply stops communicating with the newly upgraded member. This is an especially unscrupulous way of taking advantage of members using fake profiles.
Just for the record. CyberDating has one fake profile - used for testing in the men's section and one in the women's section. Can you find it?
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