(Copied in entirety with permission from eHarmony Cracked, dated Monday 21 January 2007. Thanks Scott!)
I was prepared to continue my “attachment model” series today, but, lately, I’ve been getting a lot of panicked emails about one of eHarmony’s newest “services” – relyID. Especially with eHarmony’s recent implications that people’s profiles are “incomplete” unless they submit to this service.
You may ask, “Why are they pushing this so hard?”
To understand that, you need to understand some things in the history of online “dating” services.
A few years ago, just as eHarmony was starting to become popular, a competitor arose.
Much like eHarmony, it offered compatibility testing, based on tests that were (supposedly) designed by legitimate psychologists. (And I only say “supposedly”, because I haven’t really checked out their claims.)
But this service also separated itself from eHarmony from the fact that it did background checks on its members. And threatened that it would prosecute any member whose background check indicated that they were married.
eHarmony took the high road. It investigated the possibility of initiating background checks. However, they discovered that such a process would be too error-prone to be useful. And decided it would be (legally) safest to modify the position they already had – that, since background checks are subject to errors, it’s best not to spread possibly false information. Or give anyone a false sense of confidence that a potential match was safe. They publicly acknowledged that there are some scammers on the service, and told its members to use caution.
I think eHarmony was right. And, yes, to my knowledge, eHarmony’s competitor only carried out its prosecution threat once.
Time passed. And, yes, scammers started to become more prevalent.
And, of course, this being America, many scam victims got together, and started a class-action lawsuit against another online service, for failing to do “enough” to prevent the scammers from operating. (Although, to be completely fair, many people in online dating communities had noticed that scammers seemed particularly attracted to the service that was sued.)
The case was settled out of court – and the settlement cost was very expensive.
So, eHarmony, in my mind, may be justifiably nervous. If you do background checks, you can get sued for giving false information or a false sense of security. And if you don’t do background checks, you can get sued by scam victims for not doing “enough” to prevent it.
So… what would happen if another company came along, and said, “We’ll do the background checks AND take responsibility for what happens as a result”?
You guessed it. eHarmony took the bait. Because now, if someone gets scammed, they’re protected.
If the scammer didn’t use RelyID verification? “You initiated communication with someone who refused to verify their identity? I’m sorry, but that was a bad call. You can’t blame us for THAT.”
If a scammer finds enough information about the person they’re pretending to be, and passes the RelyID process? “Identity verification is provided by RelyID. We are not responsible for the quality of the services that our advertisers provide. You can contact RelyID at ______.”
And, in the end, eHarmony still comes out OK.
Yes, I suppose that RelyID might be sued out of business someday. They’re picking up a lot of risk.
But, they can turn a tidy profit until that day. (And, I imagine that eHarmony might, as well.)
Oh, and the information that you’re entrusting RelyID with?
Did you read the Terms of Service agreement?
They’re allowed to share your private data with anybody. For any reason.
Now, do you believe that a company who is about to be sued out of business will hesitate in earning a few bucks by selling their information? Perhaps to the very identity thieves we hired RelyID to protect us from?
I don’t trust it. And I won’t use it.
Yes, using RelyID demonstrates that I’m not providing a casual false identity. But, really, in the end, the “verification” comes from information that even not-terribly-sophisticated identity theives can still obtain. It really doesn’t provide much protection.
And, in the end, a woman who’s too scared to meet someone who refused the RelyID… probably will find new reasons to fear me after the process is over.
I really don’t see it expanding my pool of “dateable” people.
But, as Dennis Miller says, “That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.”
Additional references:
(Ed’s note: see these links to read which sites Scott was talking about.)
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