Jul 27, 2010
Since the suspected scammers are coming in waves lately, we've decided to ban the countries most scammers are coming from. Basically, Senegal (breaks the record with 1-2 new profiles every day), then Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and more recently Togo.
Now, notice that the suspected scammers is underlined above - this requires an explanation. People don't seem to report scammers or suspected scammers so we can only guess our previously measures to block the scammers are working and the scammers have less or not at all access to contact other members. However, based on profile description, profile photo and the personal data entered by members in their profile (address etc.), we do ban members to a restricted category of membership where they cannot contact other members. Also, an alert is loaded on the suspected profile page (for the logged in members) and tells them that profile is suspected so they know to proceed carefully if trying to contact them.
But, since the profiles are just suspected, they have the right to upgrade their profile to a higher step (the free membership) which will allow them to use our site's services again - with some restrictions, though, like the number of messages sent daily etc. Mind that as soon as someone else will report a profile and also bring the proof that one is a scammer/spammer, we will delete that profile - so don't forget to report any suspicious behaviour of the other members on the forum.
Now, about the country banning system; this works like this: all the time we have suspicious profiles registering from Senegal. The same lame description is used, the same (Windows background) profile photo is used and so on. For the name of God, those stupid/lame scammers don't even take the time to try and foul us better. So, deleting or banning every day these people from Senegal - it might just be only one person, as far as we know - takes time and money and since our site is a free dating community, we don't afford that. Since time is money, we've decided to just ban Senegal from now on. We do let anyone to register but they're banned to access specific pages of our site, the services used to contact other members, also the blog etc. The Senegal and lately Nigeria, Ghana, Togo etc., are banned according to their IPs. Is the safest way. For your information, those members are sent to this page.
Since you might wonder why we don't ban them to access all the pages, well, the reason is that we still want them to browse some of our pages so hopefully they'll bring us a small profit from the Google adverts (like 0.01$ LOL, but still better then nothing).
By the way, in the future we will ban any other country that will send us large amounts of possible scammers/spammers, too. Right now, though, we have (had, actually) big problems with the African scammers. Seems to us that those are the most stupid and more insistent scammers in all the world.
As other security measures, we've implemented a system that will display the country from which the members visited the last time - please compare this with the location written in the members profile. Why should someone lie about their location? This is a question you can ask the possible scammer, we're also curious what they'll answer. The latest reported profiles are displayed on every page of our site, in the left menu. Again, please report any suspicious profile and also read the reports made by other people - it is better to prevent the scam before it will happen, right?
Other good news is that the new server is running smooth and the website is much faster. Also more secured. We hope you'll enjoy being a member here and help us improve the quality of our free dating site and our members.
Have fun!