Food for Thought: Classmates.com

Recently, the use of fake profiles has grown in the Dolphin community, much in part due to the recent addition of a modification which adds over three thousand people to your web site. However, many people overlook the issues with this, which can range from the simple closure of your community, to expensive lawsuits.

Recently, Classmates.com faced the worse of the two: an expensive lawsuit for deceiving people into believing their old classmates were using the service, when they actually weren't. The reason behind this lawsuit was due to the way Classmates.com sent advertisement emails, claiming that former classmates of the recipient were trying to contact them, and that they could catch-up with them if they purchased Gold membership. The only issue was, no one had tried to contact them, and it was instead a form of deceptive advertising to convince people to pay the $9.95 subscription fee for Gold membership. The lawsuit grew as more people filed complaints, and was later settled with United Online paying $9,500,000, all while admitting no wrongdoing.

This echoes the possible outcome of what has been going on with the use of fake profiles, which, to put it bluntly, is a deceptive, scam-like scheme to lure unsuspecting people into joining and using your web site. And if the web site requires a payed membership to access, the situation with Classmates.com is repeated, which can then easily result in not only a lawsuit, but criminal charges. This, combined with the fact that it can be assumed that many of the profiles (if not all)'s pictures and information were obtained without the consent of the actual person, raises the amount of consequences.

This serves as a warning to those using these fake profiles on their web site: they do not work, and will only result in your demise. While you will bring on people, they will quickly realize they are in the presence of thousands of "dummy profiles," and will not wish to stick around to find an actual person. And if you have charged for access to the web site, you have now committed a crime, and can face some serious consequences for your actions. And then we have the issue with the actual legal situation with the use of the profiles, as we are unaware of whether or not these were stolen from actual people, or if there is at least any part of it that was done so illegally.