In discussing internet dating sites the proposal here has several aspects:

1-      What is the profile of dating sites; how many are there, and how do they operate as businesses?

2-      Who owns these sites, who invests in them, and what has been their history?

3-      What kinds of information do they collect, in what detail, and who uses the information; who has access to that information and who can buy it?

        4-    What has been the experience of various population groups in
                using these sites?

4-      What are the pros-cons, successes and dangers of these internet phenomena which by conservative estimates involves tens of millions of individuals each day?

5-      How do these sites fit in with social networking sites such as Face book, Twitter and other sites?

 Finally I propose to step back and take a look at how these sites and others sites on the internet fit into what I term the Data Harvesting Society.

What is apparent is that many many of the sites on the internet irrespective of their outward stated purposes really exist to make money off the data that their subscribers and non-subscribers provide. This data exists forever in their servers and may, and is sold, to other institutions at a price—institutions which may include the government, employers, foreign entities, advertising agencies and the like.

What started out it seems to me, to be a race to gain access to the desires, needs and habits of the American consumer has mushroomed into virtually transforming American society into the Surveillance Society where virtually all of the major institutions in society have access to the most detailed information on Americans--all of this for sale and used for purposes no one really knows or reveals.

It is not easy to get information on all of this and all consumers and citizens have are vague promises that their information will never be sold or disclosed. That promise may or may not be true or kept; but more importantly, what is lacking is information and disclosure about these institutions and what information they currently collect and what uses that information is being used for. There is very little information, very little cooperation, and virtually no transparency.

I conclude with the proposition that all of this bodes ill for American society-especially when it is so easily used in political, social and economic battles and other purposes too nefarious to detail.

This is a long list, I know. But it is a list which must be looked at and surprising few have been willing to take a close look at its implications.

I am reminded of a comment of a friend:

“I realized I was placing my most intimate thoughts, identifying my friends, my tastes, their tastes, onto a computer screen, turning all this over to a computer run by people I don’t know, who will and can use that information for purposes I may or may not approve of and in some cases I pay them a subscribers fee on top of it.

That’s crazy."

Sept 19th, 2010

Scope

Well, the first question is how many of these sites are there and how many people participate and to what degree?

The scope, if the publicity blurbs are to be believed, is staggering. The top ten sites according to one site "The Top 10 Online Dating Sites of 2010" has the following information on the top ten sites.

1- Match.com claims 25 million members

2- Chemistry claims 15 million members

3- PerfectMatch claims 7 million

4- EHarmony claims 7 million

5- SeniorPeopleMeet 1.5 million

6- SingleParentMeet  900k

7- Love and Seek 1.3 (Christian Site)

8- Zoosk (International Site), 6 million

9- Spark 2 million

10-Friend Finder 3 million

This is 68.7 million members, and assuming an average member-ship fee of 20-25 dollars a month, the total dollar revenue might be as much as 1.7 billion among these top leaders alone. Add to these social networks, Face Book Twitter and the 'Adult" sites total membership for all might be 150 million for the paid sites and revenue up to 3.7 billion dollars per year.

Membership, including the social networks (Facebook claims 500 milliion alone) (obviously some of these are duplicated memberships) and we see that Americans are participating in on-line sites at very high rates--150 million is my best guessmate at this point.

Now the question which arises first is are these sites effective in producing the relationships their subscribers are seeking, and what kinds of information is solicited from prospective members and how is that information used, and by whom?

More on this tomorrow, but one pattern does emerge. The more popular on-line dating sites demand much more information from their subscribers than the less popular sites--one estimate is that subscribers end up answering more that 233 questions about themselves and their prospective friends, mates or lovers.

That is a lot of information being handed out. There is little protest as members are told this is to enhance their chances of success and is a protection for them in that more information is provided to them about prospective suitors. The obvious is that all this information is a direct benefit to site managers in soliciting advertising dollars from third parties. After all, they have more information to offer. Smaller sites cannot demand so much info and therefore are less successful competitors.

Tommorow lets take a look at this information mountain and how it it is used.

Sept  20, 2010

The demand for detail about members, or consumers is driven by the "personalized" advertising model. That is each consumer is presented with taylor-made appeals based on tracking that consumers interests (with or without their permission) as they surf the net, or from the very information they may voluntarily provide for other purposes.

Google and Amazon are the leaders in this. Go to a web page on a Google search and you will find advertisements taylor-made to your interests. How does Google know my interests? Because Google has been tracking you on the web even after you leave the Google site--wherever you go.

Amazon is more restricted. They track what products you look at and make recommendations. But it is all there.

Now an extreme of all this on internet dating sites is that programs exist to track your movements through your cell phone such that you can be sold products as you window shop, or you can be told that a person of the characteristics you desire is two blocks away from you.

So GPS is now at play.

Given hard times and recession, these sites and these tactics are enjoying a boom.

Individuals, singles especially, find it difficult to find time to date and often cannot afford expensive outings. These sites offer a social life, albeit all on line, at compartively inexpensive rates. Moreover, since marriage gets postponed during recession times, the period of single-hood has been expanding and is now extended even longer because of the financial costs of dating and marriage.

So we have an explosion of digital relationships-which are not face to face and all on a computer screen.

But, lets get back to the data aspect. Tommorow.

Sept 22, 2010

Well, as some of you have pointed out, the GPS thing is truly shocking. Not only because your friendly cell phone is beaming your shopping location back to advertisers but is, as well, tracking you. Where ever you go.

Repeat. Where ever you go.

And guess who is knee-deep in in all this. Apparently Google.  See below this article from the NY Times where we see Google and a GPS location company are fighting over who gets to control this technology. (This is much like seeing two bullies fighting over who gets to pick your bones.)

Here is the quote from the NY Times article:

"The value of the data surpasses the placing of ads on phones. It also allows companies to make inferences about a phone owner’s wealth, lifestyle and shopping preferences, which is also sought by marketers.

“We learn pretty interesting things, for instance who prefers Wal-Mart over Target, or Walgreens over CVS, who is split, which stores they will travel to get to,” said Thaddeus Fulford-Jones, chief of Locately, a location analytics company."

"The two companies are fighting for the lead in the nascent but promising business of location-based data that uses GPS or Wi-Fi signals to locate phone users. These services not only direct people to businesses, but collect information about where people are. That is valuable information that lets marketers direct advertising to people where and when they are most likely to buy.

ROY FURCHGOTT

Published: September 15, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/technology/16phone.html?ref=global_positioning_system

Now the phone companies tell you that the chip in the phone can be turned off, but guess what? They can override this feature and locate you anyway.

And, given the Patriot Act, the Government and others can, without permission, or a court order intercede this same data. Now note  on your cell phone you may have text messages, bank data, medical data and a host of other information. Plus, the thing might give you brain cancer. All in all, a not a good deal for the consumer.

Now who, do we imagine, might want to also purchase this data? The internet-dating sites, of course.

They can use the data to verify the data presented on their sites and use that data to assure subscribers that their sites have verified the information in profiles. And, you can have that verified information, they tell you, for an additional charge in the "premum" upgrade.

My own info being sold back to me.

Consumers? They don't like it? What are they going to do-sue? Don't think so. After all bad stuff might come out and who has the money to sue Goggle anyway. No, this is the first step toward the Black-Mail Society.

Shut up or we will tell what we know about you.

Depressing? You bet.

See below a link to a NYtimes article of Sept 20, 2010 which details the mushrooming lawsuits in this area.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/technology/21cookie.html?pagewanted=2&ref=technology&src=me

But, the story does not end here. More later.

Sept 23rd, 2010

But you say "I am not a member of any internet-dating site so I don't have the problem."

Not necessrily.

A vist to a site most times offers the consumer a "free membership" or a "no credit card needed" claim.

But one most often has to enter an email address.

This is the first step.

Most sites, dating and non-dating sites demand an email address.

Why?

Because an email address can and is sold to third party individuals for nice fees. An email address gives the site a count of who visits the site even if they do not join the site. An email address allows the site to place a cookie on your computer. An email address is the source of spam.  An email address is gold to any web site. Often, that is all that is needed for a site to make money--or a cookie.

Cookie?

If you don't know what a cookie is we should take the time here to look at what  I call the "Cookie Monster" industry. 

Here is how it works. Every time you go to a site, unless you expressly forbid it, the site places a "cookie" on your computer. The claim is that this is done to make your return visits more "convenient" for you. The actual purpose is to get inside your desktop or laptop and to track your subsequent visits. Cookies are little notes on your computer and many many are more than just little notes, some seek to invade your computer and send information back to the site about what you have there on your computer, your visits to competitor sites and god forbid other information you might have on your computer.

You have to expressly deny these cookies and most times if you do you can be denied access to a given site. Your bank places cookies, Amazon, Google, all of them do this.

With cookies, hackers can use these same cookies to send you back a virus, spy ware, worms and god knows what. They can send it to you and to any one in your contact list as well. So the thing spreads.

That is why I call the thing a "cookie monster" The one broswer which allows you to get rid of cookies easily is Flock. But guess what, Google just took it over from Firefox.  Cookie Monster just got "et" by a bigger cookie monster.

To make matters worse in all of this, companies, and their secret friends--hackers--can now send along a cookie just by your going to the site and nothing else and even if you don't open an attachment, a hacker can send along a virus just by having your cursor briefly go over an attachment without even opening it.

Even those innocent looking "I like it" thumbs up buttons on Face Book and elsewhere are not so innocent. Clicking on them gives advertisers and site managers access to information about everything you like and also access to the likes, tastes and habits of all your friends on Facebook.

Nothing is as it seems it seems.

So the outlook is gloomy. Yes it is-right now--until people wake up to what is happening--and they are. The lawsuits are coming thick and fast.

So that is why many companies are trying to stay ahead of the game by moving their operations to the cell phone, or even reducing their presence on the net. (More on that later)

But a last word of doom here (this seems to be a theme) is that these issues go way beyond dating sites and now international governments are also getting heavily involved.

Remember, around the world the internet is seen as an American invention (actually it was done at Cern. (Yes, that same Cern) to help scientists around the world to work together in planning the project and to stay in communication.

But later in this blog we should look at how most governments in the world want to control the internet, not only because it offers tremendous ways of controlling the citizens through an information net, but also because many nations see it as a American plot to destabilize their countries. Think tweets sent from Twitter during the Iranian election process. Control of information sent, gathered, analyzed is now used as a weapon of war.

Lets hope dissentors have never done a profile anywhere or posted their email addresses or own a cell phone. Not likely huh?

So now you see the problem.

What to do?

Sept 24, 2010

What to do is maybe premature. Let's look first at the central issue: Do these sites work in terms of matching people with their perfect mates?

No one knows for sure. But one thing is clear, despite the claims of perfect matches, the divorce rate in the United States has not gone down. So what ever is going on the impact of these sites remains in question.

But let's have a closer look at who is running some of the most popular sites, their claims and their documentation for results.

e-Harmony comes to mind. Their adverstising is everywhere and smiling happy couples hit our tv screens with dulling regularity.

Those behind E-Harmony are psychologists who use alogorithms (essentially personality tests) to steer subscribers toward that perfect mate, subscribers who pay upwards of 60 dollars a month for the help. E-Harmony claimed at one point to be responsible for 2 percent of all US marriages but there is no way to verify this claim. Moreover, the site does not allow you to go fishing for a mate, candidates are chosen for you after answering almost 260 questions. The heart of this process is of course is the test and the alogorithms behind it.

The rub here though is that no one is allowed to see the alogorithm behind the test to see if it is valid or not.

E-Harmony's competitors claim that without peer review of the assumptions in the test no scientific claims can or should be made. Besides, critics say, the site scrupuliously separtes subscribers by race and gender preferences. (Is this changing?)

"E" claims over twenty million people have filled out its survey and that raises the interesting question of who gets to see that data and who does e-Harmony share that data with? Despite claims of privacy there is precious little information here about what actually happens to that data.

What we can see emerging is a pattern where if e-Harmony does share that data with, say advertisers, us Americans can be pitched with ads that reach our innermost desires- for love and a partner- these basic human desires with the help of these sites can be used against us, or at the very least used to sell us say "Brawny" tissues."

These are what I term "Psycho Controls" in which sex, desires for love, children, babies, wealth whatever are sold to the highest bidders; where data about this may be sold indeed to develop psychological profiies a government might find useful in controlling its citizens.

If these institutions know what buttons to push because they are being gtiven the data to tell them which ones to push, by us, most of us will respond and do respond. So, does advertising work and why it works, based upon what data, becomes a central question in American society. And the answers are not particularly pretty. (Take a look at your medicine cabinet if you think you are unaffected by advertising.)

While dating sites may fight over which methdology is best, the central question of how the data they are collecting is used or sold is largely ignored.

But do sites that allow subscribers to pick their own dates do better?

Lets take a look tomorrow.

Sept 28, 2010

But before taking a look at this issue, the news today indicated that the Obama Adminstration stated its intent to seek legislation to wire-tap the internet including FaceBook, My Space, cell phones, Skype and other telecommunication-related technologies.

The rationale is that terriorist use these sites and law enforcement must be able to track them there to protect us.

Interestingly, when Saudi Arabia and China wanted control over the internet in their countries Google, and Blackberry complained that this was be an infringement upon the principles of a free society and constituted surviellance. Well here we are in the United States at that very same point. Presumptively, we can be survielled until the last known terrorist is apprehended. The home, the office, and the internet now become “electronic ankle braclets” on each and every member of the population. Scary indeed.

Now of course, this will extend to the dating sites as well. So be aware.

Now our last question was whether these dating sites actually work in the case of those sites where the subscriber is allowed to browse for h/her own dates and mates.

Good information is difficult to come by. Searching reveals that the internet is swamped by articles and phony news articles which have many many stories of success. But there is no way to verify such claims in the aggregate and few negative stories actually exist out there as a counterbalance.

How much sites contribute to marriage and beyond, however, must be balanced off with the facts we know such as: 60-70 percent of people meet and marry their future partners face-to-face at work (50%), at church, school or childhood friends. Then add those who never marry at all and the odds of finding a mate on the net are pretty small.

If all that is true , we want then to have a look at the actual experience of some who have tried their luck.

That tommorow.

 Meantime:

 See the NYtimes article on this on the Obama initiative:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/internet-wiretapping-proposal-met-with-silence/?scp=2&sq=government%20privacy&st=cse

The Electronic Frontier Foundation sounded the alarm on its website:

"These proposals are the most frightening we've seen in a long time. The first is a bill called the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act," which would give the Justice Department new powers to censor websites accused of aiding "piracy." The second is an Obama Administration proposal that would end online privacy as we know it by requiring all Internet communication service providers -- from Facebook to Skype to your webmail provider -- to rebuild their systems to give the government backdoor access to all of your private Internet communications."

Website Link:
http://action.eff.org/site/MessageViewer

http://action.eff.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=13241.0&dlv_id=26862

That tomorrow.

Sept 30, 2010

On those sites where a match in chosen for you, data is scarce on how successful those matchs are. Some may end up in meaningful friendships, or dates or marriages, or long lasting relationships and marriages. There is no way to know for sure what happens.

But we do know some things. When subscribers are given a cafeteria like assortment of possible partners to choose from, or create a shopping list of their desirable traits in a mate, a new kind of syndrome  sets in.

In real life one meets a limited number of people. But on the internet you can, on the screen at least, meet hundreds. The individual tends to sense an abundance of choices and becomes picky and even rude. Notes, winks, and flirtations can go unanswered, or ignored, or worse responded to impolitely.

Too many choices can breed a certain arrogance, especially when you realize that the 80-20 rule applies.  That is 80 percent of the subscribers end up being attracted to the most desirable 20 percent of the subscribers. That is to say since most of the subscribers are looking for the same and similar traits the 20 percent have the experience of being pursued and the 80 percent have the experience of not being the ones pursued. But individual subscribers cannot see this on their screens. They see only the people they are in contact with.

Moreover, since academics and psychologists are the ones using this data subscribers are actually paying for their research costs, providing the funds to do the research which otherwise might not be available.

Now interestingly, a subscriber is, most times, conversing with a computer monitor which may or may not have a picture and you in fact may conversing with computer generated messengers. Sites in fact, have an interest in having customers continue to seek that mate since they continue to collect the fees if the process is more drawn out. For example:

You have situations where thousands of males and females are seeking dates with members of the 20 percent who are long gone, dated out, married or otherwise disengaged.

How is a subscriber to know and it is clear that the site has no real interest in saying so since a continuation of the monthly fee is in their interest.

An attractive picture can be one obtained from almost any source and the messages and little notes can be computer generated and most sites demand that all messages and notes go through the site-no direct personal information allowed. The rationale given is that this protects the subscriber from stalkers. A legitimate concern to be sure.

However, one also must note, there is no stalker danger where the subscriber is fictitious or does not even exist or is long gone-and who would know?

So nothing is simple here. And the hapless subscriber cannot know who or what he or she is really dealing with on the other end of the note. It might be a person, hired a minimum wage, but it is not the person in the picture.

At some point a subscriber after months of trolling, can get a note saying the person has taken their profile down or cancelled their subscription, leaving the hapless subscriber out of luck and with perhaps months of subscription fees. A suggestion for an actual meeting is a acid test and the 20 percenter ceases to communicate.

If if an actual meeting does occur you may be looking at a person 20 years older than the site photo and who may have grossly exaggerated her or her allure-and you are out months of subscribers fees and then at some point realize you have been scammed, or if, naive, simply think you have been unlucky.

Next time lets look deeper into this question of how do you know if you are being scammed and save time lunching with Gordo.

Oct 2, 2010

Another aspect to all of this is most sites will send you data which  supposedly show how many people are interested in you, requests may come in from so-called "buddies"; or phony replies to your requests to communicate. 

A second aspect (which I have blogged about) is Google and Facebook advertisements. (See my Google blog) where a server can send you phony data on all aspects of your subscription-phony hits.  After all, how would you know.? (This is no idle sentence. I tested over 20 sites testing these ideas.

More later

Oct 5th, 2010

Note: The bill which would demand that online sites like Facebook, Google and the rest, create unencrypted verisons to allow governmental access has been postponed due to thousands of emails going out to the the Senate committee dealing with it.

But, but , but the word is that they will take it up after the election.

Now I was discussing a major underlying issue on ads, dating sites and access to the internet. 

What we essentially have with advertisements on the web, dating sites, Google, most sites, is that we pay money for a service which cannot be independently verified as having been delivered. What we get back is numbers on a page which say that our ads have appeared on so many web pages, or x number of people have responded to our profile or blurb. Or we may see numbers on the computer screen that x number of people have visited our web site (Google Analytics) but have no independent way of verifying those numbers on the screen.

If I pay to get my car fixed would I be satisfied with getting numbers on a computer screen?

Any number can be generated by a computer and placed before the subscriber. So, we in fact, don't know.

But how to investigate this? How do we know we are getting what we paid for?

It turns out that is not so easy to verify, especially when a lot of the communcation involved is one-way. They write you but you can't easily write back or get in touch.

Banks, brick and mortar stores with websites, investment houses, dating sites, Google, all offer predominately one way communications. Google basically says, "Hey its free so don't bother us."

Let's look again later at communication digital style.
 

Oct 9. 2010

So what we have here is a model for how companies have figured out how to make money on the internet.

1-Give them information that they cannot verify but charge them for it.

2-Identify what they like (profiles) and sell that information to third parties (this is the institutionalization of spam)
3- Do not provide any real customer service because that is costly and dangerous, and slnce folks might catch on, make communication difficult.

4- In the case of online book sales (my problem) don't provide a way for any author to verify what actual books sales are and tell them that it takes three months to get paid.

Added together, these factors are a scam, a money pyramid scheme.

5- Use information provided you by subscribers or web surfers to identify their secret desires and use that information to sell them more products and services.

6- Use information provided by these folks to provide "free" services but utilize that info and sell to third parties or give it away to government entities or employers since this will cut way back on complaints.

What are you going to do complain--to whom? They are all in it together.

So entities like Face book are utilized by everyone like ex girl friends or boy friends to out you, to tell your friends what an awful person you are and to boot you can't delete them as friends or easily delete your facebook profile. (Even if you do the data remains in their servers)

Humm, this feels ugly. To boot you now have a friendship network which is not real but digital and littered with enemies posing as friends, who can very easily send info about you (true or false) to everyone who matters to you, even your employer, girlfriend, boyfriend, your mother and your dog.

Cheered up yet?

Let's try again tomorrow.

Oct 11, 2010

Don't have much time today but I will indicate a topic for tomorrow. I wanted to know who owns these sites I had noticed a sea-change in their nature in 2007-2008. They exploded. So who ultimately is reaping the profits and how does it work?

I have covered this partially above but there is a darker story here (who can resist a juicy dark story?)

My view about that sea change can be summed up in two words:

Penthouse and Comcast.

Update: Nov 21, 2010

Note: On cellphone dangers, and incidently cordless phones as well, may be dangerous: see the NY Times article of Nov 13, 2010 "Should You Be Snuggling With Your Cellphone?"

Cellphone manufacturers have now taken to include warnings on the IPhone and other brands, apparently fearing law suits. This is no idle, not to worry about kind of thing. The lawyers know it and such warnings are now routinely included the fine print of cell phone manufactuers. Yes, the IPhone too.

Apparently the phones should be turned off when not in use, and kept away from the body and of course, the ear. The danger is more pronounced for the young, even those who do not use the phones and are merely exposed to their radiation by a sibling, or parent can suffer. Golly.

So what to do? 

More later

1-31-11
Microsoft today announced what many of us have known for years--users don't even have to open attachments. A virus and intruders and snoopers can gain access to your computer by your simply landing on a web site. And gaining access means everything.

Note: This also means that files of any sort can be downloaded to your computer or sent there, or stored there, under the control of others, without your even knowing the whole thing is going. on. This is often done in hidden files unknown to the owner of the computer. Spooky, huh?
 

"Microsoft admitted that the problem meant users could easily be fooled into downloading malicious files by doing something as simple as clicking on a web link.

"When the user clicked that link, the malicious script would run on the user's computer for the rest of the current Internet Explorer session," wrote Microsoft representative Angela Gunn in a website announcement accompanying the advisory.

Once the computer had been hijacked, hackers could use it to steal personal data or send users to fake websites, she added.

"Such a script might collect user information, e.g e-mail, spoof content displayed in the browser or otherwise interfere with the user's experience."

And just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water again, aws shows up. I know, will get to solutions in a few days. Meantime.

See link below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12325139