The 3G Dating Agency’s Blog

With 1 in 3 partners admitting to secretly snooping a look at their partners SMS’s, I guess it’s not the safest way for any would be cheats to communicate. But what if you’ve never sent or received a text and you have no interest in cheating, surely then it must be safe to think you have nothing to worry about, right?

Wrong!

Mellissa Martin with the Winnipeg Free Press reports on how a Virgin Mobile/Samsung initiative to help make it easier to send racy text messages has led to the break up of Darren P.’s relationship after his partner (of two and a half years) found the following preinstalled messages:

We hope the person at Virgin Mobile or Samsung who’s rather thoughtless actions have led to this break up can do the right thing and step in with an apology and help get the couple back together. Failing that at least they could give the guy a 3G Video Mobile so that he could get his life back together and safely meet with some new friends at The 3G Dating Agency – where our secure mobile website will also ensure any racy messaging threads he does actually write will remain private and protected by password.

Engadget have got their hands on the Google Nexus One, Google’s rival to Apple’s iPhone and a nasty little stab in the back for their Android Platform partners.

Although there isn’t much detail the pictures reveal that it’s going to feature a QR Code printed on the back of the casing. I’ve been talking for years about how useful this could be and how it could lead to some really cool device brand loyalty.

Here’s how:

1) Give every handset it’s own short URL (in the same way you give it an IMEI) and print this on the casing.
2) Also give the user a couple of extra QR Code stickers (they can stick them one on their bedroom wall and another in their car for safe keeping)
3) Host a blank mobilized webpage for every handset and bookmark it within the mobiles web browser.
4) Let users visit this webpage (by snapping the QR Code or visiting the bookmark) and personalise it (like they would with a printed business card) by adding their Name, Website, Business image etc. and supporting the hosting of their VCard for downloading.
5) Enable security by setting the devices IMEI as a one time password (which needs to be changed on first visit)
6) Offer a secure “backup my phone content & contacts” application in conjunction with this URL and the new password.

Imagine now you lose your phone, it falls in a bath of water or you just want to upgrade your old phone. Simply get a new phone, capture the QR Code (by simply capturing the QR Code on your bedroom wall, off the casing of your broken/old phone), then enter your password, hey pesto you’re back up and running with all your restored content.

Imagine now you meet someone at a conference. Simply picture the QR Code on the back of their phone and a VCard is immediately stored on your mobile. No need for fiddling about with InfraRed beams, texting your VCard, or finding their bluetooth name, authorising access, setting a password etc. simply point your cameraphone at the back of their phone, snap the QR Code, visit the website and you have it all there.

Hey why just one QR Code? …how about one for business (featuring a link to your LinkedIn profile) and one for more informal social needs (featuring a link to your facebook profile)?

The Guardian’s Sam Jones has lapped up an “unashamedly naked and upfront PR stunt” by dating website “BeautifulPeople.com” who’s founder Robert Hintze has expelled 5,000 members after festive weight gain.

The swashbuckling founder (pictured) is claiming that “chubby members” who have got ‘too fat’ for its books needed to be exiled democratically after letting themselves go over the festive period and becoming “a direct threat to our business model”. Apparently it had been “forced” to act by “gluttonous members” in the US, UK and Canada who had revealed the scale of their yuletide overindulgence in pictures they posted online since Christmas.

So please tell me if I’m not getting this right… BeautifulPeople.com is a online community that has no possible way of ensuring the photo you have submitted is in any way genuine, and it has got a problem with members who are unnecessarily updating their stored photo profiles with new photos of them looking “chubby”?

Doesn’t really add up to me…. can anyone else explain why a member of such a vanity community would do this?

The Daily Mail has a report on how Shane Symington from Portsmouth has sank into depression and debt after handing over £130,000 in an internet scam involving Nigerian fraudsters on MySpace who duped him by pretending to be a stunningly pretty American woman named ‘Angela Gates’.

The scurilous fraudsters even continued with the scam after he realised the deception by tricking him into engaging with a bogus FBI website which tricked more money out of him in order to pay legal expenses and the cost for agents to retrieve his lost money.

He said: ‘I feel sick from it all, I feel disillusioned, they have just played on my good nature. I’ve lost my life-savings, I have two loans and credit card debts, I’m in huge debts because of all of this…. …Before this happened, I used to go out every night, now I just stay in because I’ve lost all the self-confidence in my life and I don’t have the money to go out any more. I’ve also had five weeks off with depression from work… …It’s just wicked people getting everything they can get out of people… …You just can’t trust anyone on the internet. I want to warn people but I know I won’t be the last to fall for something like this.’

Detective Constable Jon Knox, of Hampshire Police, added: ‘This is a very sad situation, and this man has now parted with a huge sums of money through his own good nature – in trying to help others and then to recover some of what he had lost… …We do not want anyone else to fall foul of this kind of shocking activity and I would warn anyone who is asked for money over the internet by people they do not know to refuse and not put yourself at risk.’

Be sure to avoid Online Scammers by joining The 3G Dating Agency – our fully moderated community of validated members prevents scammers even contacting you and because every member has a 3G Video Mobile you can be sure for yourself that everyone is real!

Over the new year new member sign ups have been particularly brisk with lots of you making finding someone special top of your new year resolutions. It’s also been a very busy time for the scammers, and we’re happy to announce the first we’ve blocked to be the beautiful “CHLOE31″, here’s her picture:

The “CHLOE31″ profile boasted that she was “just sexy n cute”, “single n looking for a guy who wil love me for fun date n sex lol”. Our moderators got suspicious when we saw that “CHLOE31″ was advertising the 35338 premium short code that belongs to the “Mobile Date Channel” (http://www.mobiledatechannel.com) and charges approximately $2 per message recieved.

One more check of the IP address and it was obvious this scam was an attempt to place a free advert for the Mobile Date Channel, run by Toronto VoC0Mo Inc (http://vocomo.ca) who is partnered with brands including “Mobile Hookup txt.talk.date” (mobilehookup.net), “Heart2Heart Mobile” (h2hmobile.com) and “Quest Mobile” (questmobilechat.com)

As another scam profile bites the dust… the team here at The 3G Dating Agency would like to wish you a safe, scam free, happy and successful 2010!

The Press Association reports that Police are investigating a complaint from ex-Atomic Kitten singer Kerry Katona that she was stalked by an online friend she befriended on Facebook who visited her mansion home in Cheshire unannounced. Katona, 29, was told by police investigating the matter to be more wary of privacy issues while sharing sensitive personal information on open social networking websites.

An interesting Evening Standard article quotes Joel Simkhai, founder of Grindr the Gay Location Based Mobile Community, claiming that a mention by Jeremy Clarkson and Stephen Fry on the BBC Top Gear Programme (reported here on the 3G Dating Agency Blog) has led to the sign up of 30,000 new members.

NOTE: The “Grindr” application is an 18+ NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK gay cruising community.

“Mobile Dating is growing gangbusters now and it’s all about location. iphone apps abound and smartphones led by the iphone are driving internet and social dating into ubiquity at last. In a 2007 review the global mobile dating market was pegged at £200 million in worth, that figure rose to 332million in 2008 and is expected to more than double over the next five years reaching £784 million by the year 2013″

Read about the rise of Mobile Dating over at Online Personals. Watch the Online Personals Video News Report.

For the dragons who turned us down… we look forward to showing you how in 2010 we’re going to continue to lead the creation of the next Billion Dollar industry.

Tektion Tech Blog gets enthusiastic about the opportunity for 3G Dating to take the waiting out of dating and ensure profiles are genuine…

“Dating communities are now making the shift towards online mobile dating. Not a lot of people are sold into the idea of meeting their lifetime partners through their mobile phones just yet. But with the functionality of the 3G video technology, people can interact with one another easily. Big mobile companies all across the globe had seen the possibility and developed platforms and software for these types of services. Right now, brokerage firms are venturing into mobile banking and mobile dating as well.

Mobile dating is a hit because you can technically do it anywhere. You can chat and meet with your prospect during your break time, before going to bed, and if you’re out on a leisure work. And if online dating is infested with fake profiles, mobile dating has a solution for that – 3G video. If online dating sites introduce the use of web cams, mobile dating can easily utilize 3G technology. And that’s because most of the cell phones available these days are equipped with a digital camera that can be used for 3G video calling. “

The hilarious Omid Djalili has been selected by Money Supermarket to front a TV Ad Campaign that will encourage shoppers to compare offers and buy Mobile Deals online…

Whilst Money Supermarket has done a great job selling consumers competitive Insurance or Utility Bills, I don’t think an attack on rogue independent stores and pushy/untrustworthy salesmen will help the price comparison website crack the high street and online dominance of the operators or big retailers. After being stung by the various cash back and small print scams most of the rip off guys (or “Hassle Heroes”) that this advert alludes to are already out of business and customers are particularly wary of new brands that have yet to earn their trust. The sales figures for the latest exclusive 3G smartphone deals also show that despite the general market slow down, customers still want to be first to get their hands on the latest new 3G Mobiles.

Ensure you get the best deal on the latest 3G mobile by visiting phones4u.co.uk/3gdating and we’ll also give you £35 of FREE Credit to spend on 3G Dating!!!