What’s Behind Online Dating Fraud? Iovation Quantifies The How Often, What, When And Where – Yahoo Finance

This includes specifics around what kind of scams cybercriminals perpetrate, when fraudsters strike, how often fraud occurs and where the fraud originates from. “With the rise in online dating memberships, fraudsters have looked to advantage,” said Molly O’Hearn , Vice President of Operations at iovation. “The one thing that online dating scammers have in common is that their preferred target demographic is vulnerable and trusting people with a limited social circle or support group.” How Much Fraud Occurs In 2014, 1.37 percent of all transactions on online dating sites were fraudulent. In comparison, iovation says 1.24 percent of all transactions it monitored across all industries in 2014 were fraudulent. In February 2014 — the time period where people increasingly seek companionship around Valentine’s Day — 1.46 percent of all online dating transactions were fraudulent. On February 14, 2014 — Valentine’s Day — 1.41 percent of all transactions were fraudulent on online dating sites. In this case, iovation defines transactions as any interaction a customer has with an online dating site such as account registration, activation, login, account management and purchase. Top Types of Fraud The top five types of fraud that occur on online dating sites, in order of most to least perpetrated, are: 1.Scams/solicitations — User takes advantage of the community to promote nonexistent services and products, or to solicit services from legitimate members 2.Spam — Person is caught sending unsolicited bulk messages via emails, postings, and instant messages to promote other products, websites or companies 3.Credit card fraud — Cybercriminal uses a fake or stolen credit card to create multiple or premium accounts to scam users 4.Profile misrepresentation — Fraudster posts inaccurate identity information in a profile and/or uses bogus profile photos 5.Identity mining — Scammer makes any attempt to http://www.montpelierjournal.com/9007-the-dating-point-to-launch-its-newest-website-for-mens-dating-guide_mpj.html illegitimately acquire personal information from other users through means of phishing, keystroke logging, creating fake business websites and other methods “Scammers used to build relationships only to later repeatedly solicit funds, but now they are causing even more harm,” said O’Hearn.
Full story: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/whats-behind-online-dating-fraud-194810565.html

What’s Behind Online Dating Fraud? Iovation Quantifies The How Often, What, When And Where – Yahoo Finance

This includes specifics around what kind of scams cybercriminals perpetrate, when fraudsters strike, how often fraud occurs and where the fraud originates from. “With the rise in online dating memberships, fraudsters have looked to advantage,” said Molly O’Hearn , Vice President of Operations at iovation. “The one thing that online dating scammers have in common is that their preferred target demographic is vulnerable and trusting people with a limited social circle or support group.” How Much Fraud Occurs In 2014, 1.37 percent of all transactions on online dating sites were fraudulent. In comparison, iovation says 1.24 percent of all transactions it monitored across all industries in 2014 were fraudulent. In February 2014 — the time period where people increasingly seek companionship around Valentine’s Day — 1.46 percent of all online dating transactions were fraudulent. On February 14, 2014 — Valentine’s Day — 1.41 percent of all transactions were fraudulent on online dating sites. In this case, iovation defines transactions as any interaction a customer has with an online dating site such as account registration, activation, login, account management and purchase. Top Types of Fraud The top five types of fraud that occur on online dating sites, in order of most to least perpetrated, are: 1.Scams/solicitations — User takes advantage of the community to promote nonexistent services and products, or to solicit services from legitimate members 2.Spam — Person is caught sending unsolicited bulk messages via emails, postings, and instant messages to promote other products, websites or companies 3.Credit card fraud — Cybercriminal uses a fake or stolen credit card to create multiple or premium accounts to scam users 4.Profile misrepresentation — Fraudster posts inaccurate identity information in a profile and/or uses bogus profile photos 5.Identity mining — Scammer makes any attempt to http://www.montpelierjournal.com/9007-the-dating-point-to-launch-its-newest-website-for-mens-dating-guide_mpj.html illegitimately acquire personal information from other users through means of phishing, keystroke logging, creating fake business websites and other methods “Scammers used to build relationships only to later repeatedly solicit funds, but now they are causing even more harm,” said O’Hearn.
Full story: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/whats-behind-online-dating-fraud-194810565.html

What’s Behind Online Dating Fraud? Iovation Quantifies The How Often, What, When And Where – Yahoo Finance

What Consumers Should Look For There are many telltale signs that someone’s looking to defraud you on an online dating check this out site. Some of the more common clues are: Being asked to move the conversation off of the dating site too soon An unusual use of words, bad grammar and/or excessive punctuation Someone geographically far from you attempts to strike up a conversation After minimal contact, someone professes strong feelings Claims of working out of the country for an extended time Online personality varies to extremes Profile picture or photograph looks different from their description Personal information or phone number is requested too soon “An increasingly common dating scam that occurs on dating sites experience is when fraudsters target older females in rural areas and shower them with kindness. The scammers claim to be engineers working outside of the country on a big project. They court their victims extensively, even sending presents on special days,” said Jon Karl , Vice President of Corporate Development at iovation. “When the fraudsters feel the time is right, they say they have an emergency, can’t access their bank account back home, and need money wired to them immediately. In many cases, the victims fall for the scam.” What Businesses Should Look For Knowing the true location of scammers, and when they are hiding behind proxies or using Tor — a privacy protocol that is intended to help people to browse the Internet anonymously — is extremely helpful to dating sites for protecting their twitter members. iovation has a unique view into the activity of Internet-enabled devices across the globe. By protecting online businesses in a variety of industries, including dating, gaming, financial services, retail and others, iovation’s shared device intelligence helps businesses sort good customers from the bad.
Full story: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/whats-behind-online-dating-fraud-194810565.html

Dating Site Topface Says Paid Hacker To Not Sell Stolen Data – Yahoo News

Topface Chief Executive Dmitry Filatov said the company located the hacker, who had published ads to sell the data but had not actually sold them. “Wehave paid him anaward for finding avulnerability and agreed on further cooperation inthe field ofdata security,” Filatov said in an email on Friday, declining to disclose the size of the reward. Topface says it has some 92 million users and 1.6 million daily visitors. Cybersecurity experts typically advise companies not to pay hackers to return stolen data, calling that a ransom and saying cyber criminals often break promises. But Filatov noted that the ads have already been removed and Topface has agreed not to pursue charges against the unidentified individual. “As we made an agreement with him we do not see any reason for him to break it,” said Filatov. see page Atlanta-based fraud protection firm Easy Solutions disclosed the hack on Sunday, reporting on its blog that a hacker known as “Mastermind” was attempting to sell 20 million credentials for an unnamed dating site. The security firm had warned the credentials might be used to access accounts on other sites because people frequently use the same passwords for multiple accounts. It said the data included 7 million credentials from Microsoft Corp’s Hotmail service as well as 2.5 million from email accounts with Yahoo Inc and Google Inc.
Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/dating-topface-says-paid-hacker-not-sell-stolen-192703658.html

On Okcupid, Ross Ulbricht Was A “scientist Turned Entrepreneur” | Ars Technica

The writeupincludes plenty of typical dating-profile fare:a photo of him witha dog (“women are helpless against his powers,” reads the caption), a photo of him jumping off a cliff into a body of water, a photo of him in a toga for Halloween. “Doing my best hugh hefner,” he writes in a caption to a photo of himself in a robe and smoking from a pipe. In another photo, from Thailand, he feigns shock posing in front of what he describes as a “shrine of dildos.”Under “first things people notice about me,” he says “many think I look like Robert Pattinson [the lead actor of the Twilight film series] at first.” OkCupid He lists The Power of Now, a best-selling book by Eckhart Tolle that touts itself as a “Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment,” as one of his favorite books. For music, he states that Electric Light Orchestras Im Alive is meet women his theme song. Theprofile shows him as last logging into the site onSeptember 29, 2013, just two days before he was arrested in a San Francisco library. Federal agents who arrested him took his laptop and have used files on it as evidence against him in court.
Full story: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/on-okcupid-ross-ulbricht-was-a-scientist-turned-entrepreneur/

Russian Dating Site Topface Hacked For 20 Million User Names – Bloomberg

Topface didnt respond to a request for comment via its press website. Ingevaldson said it is no longer clear that users passwords were also taken, as he originally told Bloomberg. Hackers can use the credentials to try to access bank accounts, health records or other more sensitive data, said Ingevaldson in a telephone interview. Ingevaldson issued a statement about the breach after seeing a posting by the thief, who used the alias Mastermind, on an online forum used by cybercriminals. Fifty percent of the credentials were for people based get women in Russia , and 40 percent came from the European Union. All told, the 20 million people used e-mail addresses with 345,000 different domain names. Seven million of the people that logged in to the St. Petersburg-based dating site used Hotmail.com, 2.5 million used Yahoo.com, and 2.3 million used Gmail.com. These arent credit cards, but this is a tier-one breach, said Ingevaldson.
Full story: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-25/hacker-steals-20-million-passwords-from-unidentified-dating-site.html

Jason Segel Dating Photographer Alexis Mixter – Yahoo News

The “Sex Tape” star, 35, is dating photographer Alexis Mixter, according to Us Weekly . The new couple has been spending time together in Ojai, Calif., according to a source for the mag. They were also photographed together at Los Angeles International Airport last month. Alexis is the sister of “The Real L Word’s” Whitney Mixter. Jason previously dated “Edge of Darkness” star Bojana Novakovic in 2013. Prior to Bojana, the actor was linked to Michelle Williams and former “Freaks and Geeks” co-star Linda Cardellini. — Erin O’Sullivan Copyright 2015 by NBC free Universal, Inc .
Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/jason-segel-dating-photographer-alexis-mixter-232545057.html

Get Texts From Your ‘invisible Boyfriend’ – Cnn.com

Why, that’s sometimes better than an Actual Boyfriend! Matthew Homann, who describes himself as a “recovering moved here lawyer” with “idea surplus disorder,” came up with the idea several years ago after a divorce and bought the domain InvisibleGirlfriend.com for $7. He filed it away until late 2013, when he pitched it to a St. Louis hackathon. A long weekend later, he and his team won the contest. That probably would have been it except for BuzzFeed, which picked up the story from a local alternative newspaper. Suddenly Homann — who already had a full-time job running his company, an innovation-strategy firm called Kendeo — realized that, thanks to the attention, Invisible Boyfriend had better be good. The result is a web service, launching in beta this week, that allows you to invent your potential partner.
Full story: http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/living/feat-invisible-boyfriend-girlfriend/index.html

Dating Disasters Book: Leah Messer To Share Stories?

We will need a story from you for the next volume:):) xo. In response, Messer said , Oh yes!! Messer and Calvert have been married for nearly three years, and have one child together (Messer meet women also has older twin girls, Ali and Aleeah). In October, things became strained when Calvert accused Messer of cheating on him with Robbie Kidd. However, the pair didnt split. Instead, they opted to work on their marriage and continue to do so. According to Amazon, the description of Were Just Not That Into You: Dating Disasters from the Trenches is as follows. Dancing with the Stars pro Karina Smirnoff believed her then-boyfriend when he said that the bag of condoms she found in his suitcase belonged to a buddy of histhat he was holding http://www.montpelierjournal.com/9007-the-dating-point-to-launch-its-newest-website-for-mens-dating-guide_mpj.html them for him. He wasnt. In Were Just Not Into You, Karina and her best friend and manager, Lindsay Rielly, dish about their dating escapades with A-listers and average Joes, the craziest pickup lines theyve ever heard, and the unbelievable moves guys have tried to land them both.
Full story: http://www.inquisitr.com/1763650/dating-disasters-teen-mom-2-star-leah-messer-calvert-to-share-stories/

‘man Seeking Woman’ Navigates ‘minefield’ Of Millennial Dating – Yahoo News

Now see here he has to enter the highly complex, rule-filled dating world, and things are about to get really ugly. “Man Seeking Woman,” a new FXX comedy series premiering Wednesday and starring Jay Baruchel as the hapless Josh, spins a twist on how Millennials find love in today’s tech-infiltrated world. “Being single in your 20s, it’s a minefield, it’s a circus, it’s degrading, it’s exhilarating, local women it’s beautiful and ugly,” said Baruchel. “It’s all these wonderful contradictions, but it’s nothing if not ridiculous.” In the first episode, Josh finds himself set up on a blind date by his sister with a troll in a dress who attacks him, and yet he’s forced to apologize to her. Later, Josh gets his hopes up of reuniting with his ex-girlfriend when she asks him to a party, only to find she has a new boyfriend, and it’s none other than an aged, wheelchair-bound Adolf Hitler who’s the life of the party. “Josh makes me laugh,” said Baruchel. “He has very poor decision-making skills and he just has a very strange, desperate sense of himself.” “Man Seeking Woman” was created by humorist Simon Rich and inspired by his novel “The Last Girlfriend on Earth.” He said his goal was to find extramundane metaphors to depict the emotional roller coaster involved in 21st century dating. “It is supernatural and absurd, but I like to think that when it comes to the character’s emotional journey, it’s very honest,” Rich said.
Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/man-seeking-woman-navigates-minefield-millennial-dating-203202012–finance.html