Class Action Alleges More Than Half of Match.com Profiles are Fake, Used to Entice New Members

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Match.com parent company Match Group, LLC is the defendant in a proposed class action lawsuit in which the plaintiff claims more than half of the profiles on the dating website are fake and exist as a mechanism to lure in new subscribers.

Filed in Illinois, the 21-page complaint explains that new Match.com members are quickly “bombarded” with messages to their sign-up email accounts from individuals who are supposedly interested in making a connection. According to the lawsuit, however, the communications new Match.com users receive come not from actual human users, but instead from profiles the defendant uses to “induce” consumers into joining the site and/or continuing to pay for their memberships.

“In many instances, the communications consumers receive are not from actual users of Match’s online dating services,” the lawsuit alleges. “Many users routinely discover that the profiles of the persons who purportedly are interested in them are fake or fraudulent profiles and not associated with anybody whom they can date or even communicate.”

The lawsuit slams Match Group—which operates a portfolio of 45 brands, including Tinder, PlentyOfFish, and others—for its boasts of having “millions” of active subscribers when, in truth, according to the complaint, “well over half” of the profiles on the dating website are fraudulent and unreachable by legitimate users. Worse, the case goes on, Match.com appears to have made “little to no effort” to “vet, police or remove” the allegedly fake profiles – conduct the lawsuit says goes hand in hand with the company’s marketing campaigns touting the number of consumers who use its service.