The 3G Dating Agency’s Blog

More: iHiApp

Okay so this hot couple might be the ultimate “ones that got away” but join us for the 3G Dating Agency’s Royal Wedding Wedding Weekend giveaway from 9am on Friday 29th to 5pm on Monday 2 May and bag yourself your own prince/princess and it won’t cost you anything apart from your normal data plan and call costs because over the weekend we’ll have extra staff working to validate new members (to make sure everyone is 18+ and “honestly described”) and all messages between members will be free of charge.

Still haven’t got a 3G Mobile? Pop into your local Phones 4U store or visit their website and we’ll even give you an extra £30 of credit to spend on 3G Dating for when all the bunting’s been taken down!

Oh and if you’re not in the mood yet, watch this:

At The 3G Dating Agency we’ve held off on introducing location to our mobile dating experience because of security and privacy reasons. We decided that the best way for daters to share their location with another member was by sending it directly to the other member they like as part of a personal message. So far it seems to be working although we’ve had some members suggesting we add the ability to checkin or find singles in real time based on their location.

The latest research from Forrester highlights why I think it’s doomed to fail for a Mobile Dating Community: women just aren’t as enthusiastic about it as men.

Featuring Mobile Entertainment Editor Tim Green as “Devon Avis”, Andrew Fischer of Shazam, Russell Buckley of AdMob and Tony Pearce of TeePee Games:

I know exactly what they mean… after all how could a mix of mobile and dating ever make any money!

Source: Mobile Entertainment

Tonya Blaze and Kevin Zunk a Toledo Ohio couple have pleaded guilty to a scam where they engaged with adults who are using popular online dating sites that tolerate fake dating profiles. We’ve long been highlighting the safety and privacy risks associated with this practice but it seems it’s a problem that the dating industry doesn’t want to face up to – the way they see it customers who place or engage with fake profiles still pay their bills.

With exposure of this latest scam maybe customers will wake up to the problem and vote with their feet for Dating communities (like The 3G Dating Agency) where checks are made to ensure every member is aged 18+ and their validated profile image is a genuine portrayal of how they look.

Here are the details:

> The scammers created profiles with the image of a completely innocent young woman taken from a social networking site

> The profile describes the dater as an 18 year old who is looking for adult fun

> Guys engage with the advert and are asked for their email address and telephone number, supposedly so that they can start a more private dialogue.

> The scamming couple check out the details supplied to find vulnerable victims. In this case the scammers wanted to extort money so they’d be looking for people with a high profile, affluence who are maybe already married.

> The scammers then start engaging with the victim using a pay as you go mobile and convince him to send explicit pictures.

> The scammers then contact their victim with a story that claims they’ve just found their 11 year old daughters mobile to be containing communications and explicit photos from the victim.

> The victim is then threatened with criminal charges unless they pay them off, claiming the need for money in order to charge the daughters number and (playing the good cop bad cop approach familiar in movies) appease the mother who is mad and wants the Sheriff to expose this guy as a pervert.

> Facing the prospect of being exposed publicly as a sex offender, losing their job and having their families break up the victims are known to have paid as much as $10,000 to the scammers

> After extorting the first chunk of money the scammers contacted the victims repeatedly demanding more money and threatening to call the victim’s boss if they didn’t pay. It was the persistence with this exhortion practice that led to one victim involving the FBI.

> The courts have so far identified 7 victims – although as you can probably imagine with the nature of this scam there’s not going to be a rush of victims trying to get themselves noticed.