Continuation of Match.com: FTC sues Match.com for fake users

The federal government accuses the Match.com dating site of fishing for its own users.

The Federal Trade Commission is suing Match Group, which owns Match.com (as well as Tinder, OKCupid and PlentyOfFish), for allegedly using fake love announcements to persuade consumers to pay for subscriptions.

Match.com allows people to create profiles for free, but requires a subscription to be able to respond to messages. Match sent emails to non-subscribers telling them that they had received an answer on the site. But millions of emails have cited notices from accounts already identified as fake, the FTC said Wednesday.

"Match had prevented some of these suspicious accounts from sending messages to paying subscribers, but did not offer the same protection to free account users", the FTC said in a blog. People who subsequently subscribed in response to these messages were potentially exposed to fraudsters. The FTC states that this practice is unfair because it exposes people to love scams so that Match earns more money.

"Online dating services should obviously not use scammers as a way to improve their results," said Andrew Smith, director of the FTC's Consumer Protection Bureau, in a press release.

An example of a notice sent by Match.com to users to encourage them to subscribe

Courtesy Federal Trade Commission

The prices of the Match.com subscriptions vary according to the duration, ranging from 20 USD to more than 30 USD per month, depending on the duration of the subscription of a user.

The FTC said that hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to Match.com after receiving communications from fake profiles.

The FTC also claims that Match did not adequately disclose the requirements that consumers needed to get a free six-month match offer if they did not meet someone special, and that it did not offer a simple cancellation of the subscription. practices.

The FTC opened an investigation on Match.com in March 2017, the company said in a statement. The FTC tried to settle with Match a $ 60 million fine, but negotiations were broken, resulting in the filing of the complaint Wednesday.

Match Group said it was blocking 96% of fake accounts and robots in one day. He said the government was making "totally unfounded allegations, supported by deliberately misleading figures," and that it would defend itself "vigorously" in court.

Match Group shares fell nearly 2% to about $ 71.50. The majority shareholder of the public company is IAC / InterActiveCorp.

With reporting from the Associated Press.