I’ve written in this space before about some of the issues
with online dating sites – fake profiles, site employees flirting with
prospective members to make the site look more useful than it is, hordes of
long-since-abandoned profiles being left up to inflate the number of “members”
using the site, and so on. A number of site operators have attempted to deal
with these perceptions by specializing in one particular demographic of
date-seekers, notably including people over the age of 50, fans of various pop
culture communities, people from specific professions or educational
backgrounds, or even (amazingly enough) farmers and ranch hands. Almost
inevitably, some of these specialized sites have focused on members of a
specific religious group, on the principle that people consider membership in
the same faith to be a requirement for a serious relationship, and are more
likely to be trustworthy than godless heathen…
Given the nature of cybercrime (and the general nature of
human beings) I wasn’t really all that surprised to read this story from ABCNews (by way of the Yahoo News page) about a serial rapist who appears to have
found and selected his victims entirely through the creation of multiple fake
profiles on the Christian dating site Christian Mingle. It isn’t clear from the
news story if any of the victims let their guard down because of the nature of
the site they met the guy on, or if this is just more sensationalist news
reporting. On reflection, however, I’m not sure it matters in the larger
context of new online risk…
Now, I don’t mean to suggest that any significant number of
the people on any particular Internet site are rapists (or other types of
criminal); nor do I oppose the creation and use of these services. The truth
is, businesses that help single people in doing something about their condition
existed for decades before the appearance of the Internet, and all of the
dangers currently associated with online dating services were present in all of
those channels as well – not to mention the risks inherent in meeting people in
singles bars, coffee houses, community college classes, or any of the other
venues people have used to meet other people over the years. It’s only in the
implication that a given service is better because of its religious affiliation
that things start to get murky…
In its incessant online advertising, Christian Mingle
actually uses the tag-line “Discover God’s plan for you” – clearing implying
that using their service will get you a date specifically chosen for you by the
Almighty. While this is clearly fanciful (how exactly would a private company
employ God as a matchmaker? What could they possibly offer as a salary?), the
company is trying to differentiate its service from dozens of others by
claiming an affiliation with the Christian religion, and implying that matches
obtained through their service are somehow superior to those obtained using any
other service. All of which might seem innocent enough – until someone starts using
that veneer of religious approval to commit horrific crimes…
I’m not sure if the moral of this story is the oft-repeated “Don’t
believe everything you see on the Internet” or if “Anything that looks too good
to be true probably isn’t true” conveys the message better. But I’m reminded of
another truism: “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than
going to a garage makes you a car.” Apparently, the same can be said about
people who go to Christian websites…
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