How to Spot a Fake Match.com Profile
By Lance on Aug 1, 2008 in Dating
This post is part of a series of posts on online dating and Match.com. Check out the other posts here:
- Unlikely Superheroes: The Men of Match
- I Want A Tall, Handsome, Ambitious Man To Sweep Me Off My Feet Because I Love To Laugh!
- How To Do A Power Search On Match.com
- I Met My Girlfriend on Match.com
- Interview with Gary Stock, Author of “Bad Match” (Part 1)
If you haven’t noticed it already, there are tons of fakes, spammers, frauds inhabiting online dating sites. Match is a little better than a free site like plentyoffish, but it still has it’s share of fakes and scammers.
Where I live, I’ll probably identify one fake out of every 30 profiles. There are a number of tip-offs for spotting a fake and after reading this post you’ll be able to identify them too.
Why are there fakes? My theory is that the online sites actually employ people to re-post old, disabled accounts in order to balance out the male-to-female ratio. The ratio is already skewed against men, but these fakes give off the impression that there are a few more fish in the sea. I don’t have proof, but if you do a google search on “fake match.com profiles” you’ll see a TON of consumer complaints. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Some fakes are spammers, and these folks are trying to induce you to send them a real email address. Others are scammers who will try to extract money from you after you contact them. Avoid all of these completely if you suspect a fake.
Most damning though, and this is conjecture, is that an online site employee would send you a wink or email from a fake account to get you to renew your subscription. I’ve often received what I felt like were fake flirtations when I didn’t have a lot of activity going on with my account.
Let’s dive in. Here’s how to spot a fake. I’ll use a match.com profile I found recently as an example…
Okay, the first and biggest tip-off is that the fake doesn’t have any additional pictures. Rarely will a woman post only one picture. Even if she creates a new profile, she’ll usually upload at least 3-4 pictures. I’ve actually seen fakes with 2-3 pictures before, but these are infrequent. This is the first tip-off but in itself doesn’t guarantee a fake profile. Let’s keep going.
Tip-off number two. The fake has no “In my own words” section! Nada, zilch. Why? Because whoever is posting these are too lazy to actually fill out the profile. When I see this combined with only 1 picture, I’m 99% certain the profile is fake.
Number three. Note the bad writing in the “About me” paragraph. Notice it’s short, generic, and poorly written. Big tip-off there. Watch for a lack of specifics. Check out the very last line: “I hope Match you…” Bad english is the best tip-off because most scammers are non-English speakers.
My favorite part of the whole fake profile is the “About my date” section. Notice the scammer posted a broad height range (5′ to 7′), which is unrealistic. Real women are obsessive about height ranges and they sure as heck aren’t going to list 5’0″ as the minimum. Most chicks list around the 5’8″ to 6’4″ range, with the really hot chicks shifting towards the six-footers as a minimum. If you’re interested in reading about an awesome match.com experiment one dude performed as it pertains to height and looks, see here.
Also, real people usually fill out the education, job, and income fields.
So there you go, a handful of tip-offs to separate wheat from chaff. Fake profiles are annoying but I don’t let it prevent me from using Match.com. All online services have them and it’s like any other form of dating. There’s a game to be played and the game has pitfalls.
If you root out a fake, use the Report A Concern feature on the right hand side of the profile to notify the Match.com customer service team. This will help to keep the overall community clean.
Have you ever encountered a fake profile or scammer on Match.com? Let me know your experience in the comments below.
