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It's just not your case. Or maybe it was a bot? The US Federal Trade Commission announced Wednesday it had sued Match Group, owner of almost all dating apps – including Match, Tinder, OKCupid, Hinge, PlentyofFish and others – for fraudulent business practices. According to the FTC, Match has deceived hundreds of thousands of consumers by asking them to buy subscriptions, exposing their customers to the risk of fraud and engaging in other deceptive and unfair practices.
The pursuit focuses solely on Match.com and boils down to this: Match.com did not just turn a blind eye to its huge bot and scammer problem, the FTC. claims. He consciously took advantage of it. In addition, misleading users are at the heart of its business practices.
The charges against Match are pretty important.
The FTC claims that most consumers do not know that 25-30% of Match's recordings a day come from scammers. This includes romantic scams, phishing scams, fraudulent advertising and extortion scams. In some months from 2013 to 2016, more than half of Match's communications came from accounts identified as fraudulent by the company.
Robots and crooks, of course, are a problem on the Web. The difference is that, in the case of Match, she indirectly benefited at the expense of the consumer, as claimed by the lawsuit.
The dating app has sent marketing emails (that is, "You've caught your attention" notices) to potential subscribers about new messages in the app's inbox. However, he did it after already reported the sender of the message as bot or suspected scammer.
"We believe that Match.com has pushed people to pay for subscriptions via messages that the company knew were coming from scammers," said Andrew Smith, director of the FTC's Consumer Protection Bureau. "Online dating services should obviously not use scammers as a way to enrich their results."
According to Match's analysis, between June 2016 and May 2018, 499,691 consumers took out a subscription within 24 hours of receiving an e-mail advertising this fraudulent communication, the FTC said. Some of these consumers joined Match only to find the message that brought them: a scam. Others joined the group after Match removed the scammers account as a result of its fraud review process. It only remained for them to find that the account that sent them was now "unavailable."
In any case, the victims were now stuck with a subscription – and a problem when they were trying to cancel.
Due to the alleged misleading advertising, billing and cancellation practices of Match, consumers often tried to reverse their fees with their bank. Match would then ban users from the application.
At the same time, Match also violates the ROSCA (Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act) by not providing an easy way for customers to stop recurring charges, says the FTC. In 2015, an internal document from Match showed that it took 6 clicks to cancel a subscription and often left consumers thinking that they were canceling while they were not doing it.
And the lawsuit alleges that Match cheated people for them to sign up for a free six-month subscription by promising them that they would not have to pay if they did not meet someone else. 39; a. However, it did not adequately reveal the need for other specific measures, such as how to use their subscription or use their free months.
Match, of course, challenges the question. In fact, she claims to fight fraud and handle 85% of potentially inappropriate accounts during the first four hours, often before they become active. And he manages 96% of these fraudulent accounts in the day.
"For nearly 25 years, Match has been working to help people find love and fight against criminals who are trying to take advantage of users. We have developed advanced tools and AI that block 96% of the bots and fake accounts of our site in one day and are striving relentlessly to rid our site of these malicious accounts, "said Match in response to this news. . "The FTC has distorted internal emails and relied on carefully chosen data to make outrageous claims and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves against these claims in court."
As you may know, the match group loves to spend the day in the courts.
The FTC's lawsuit is not the only one faced by Match's parent company because it is (allegedly) not fair.
A group of Tinder executives is suing Match and its controlling shareholder, IAC, for manipulating financial data to deprive them of their stock options. The lawsuit continues today, even though some of the complainants had to withdraw because Match had inserted an arbitration clause into the acknowledgment of compliance of its employees.
At present, these former plaintiffs act as witnesses and Match attempts to argue that the litigation funding agreement compensates them too much for their testimony, in violation of the law. The judge described this application as "smoke screen" and an attempt to "litigate". [the plaintiffs] until death, until they install themselves.
The match group also got involved with his rival, Bumble, whom he did not buy twice. She sued for patent infringement, which, according to Bumble, was intended to reduce her assessment. Bumble then filed and later abandoned its own $ 400 million match suit by fraudulently obtaining Bumble's trade secrets.
In the latest lawsuit, the FTC asks Match to repay the "ill-gotten" money and wants to impose civil penalties and other remedies. Although the financial returns are not sufficient to eliminate a company with Match's resources, the trial's titles could lead to an increase in negative consumer confidence in Match and online dating. It is a company that has become commonplace and standardized in society, but also has the reputation of being sometimes a little roguish. This costume is not going to help.
And since Match Group operates the majority of the best online dating applications in the United States, it could have a greater impact on its broader business.
The FTC combination is available below.
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