Catfishing Fraud

1090 Words3 Pages

What’s the Cat-ch?: Attempts to Control Catfishing Fall Flat Catfishing and online dating fraud is an expanding issue that has recently been gaining increasing notice from the public due to productions like the MTV show Catfish and the general increase of occurrences. Because of this, one would think that the attempts at intervention to try and stop this type of scam would increase also. In reality, all attempts to regulate this type of crime or hold the site platforms accountable for providing means have fallen flat. If the social media platforms and websites accepted the responsibility of monitoring how their services are used and enforced more stringent policies regarding who they allow to use their sites and how, it is likely catfishing …show more content…

Bush. This act protects internet users against everything from emails sent by fabricated companies to pornographic messages. Despite how useful this may appear to the everyday person, there is a catch; CAN-SPAM only works against “commercial electronic mail messages.” Congress chose to define this as “...any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service... not [including] a transactional or relationship message” (US Congress 2). What purpose can there be in omitting such a relevant problem from an incredibly important piece of legislation? CAN-SPAM protects a broad range of people from suffering huge loss, and has the potential to protect many more, but it needs to be amended. Crucial reformation cannot be expected to occur without support from the government, and the government cannot efficiently provide that support without proper legislation in place. There is no viable reason for this lack of regulation concerning online dating, and inaction is causing much more harm than legislators would like to believe. Lawmakers even a few years ago could not possibly have predicted the boom in internet culture that modern society has experienced, and passing a new or updated bill requiring more readily available and solid identification on …show more content…

In 2011 a woman Carole Markin sued Match.com for not screening its users and allowing for the opportunity for her to be raped by convicted sex offender Alan Wurtzel, a man with whom she was paired with through the website (Horcher 1). Markin was subjected to completely unnecessary trauma due to the fact the site she was using did not keep very good track of what kind of people they allowed to sign up. Ideally sites would step up and conduct these procedures without issue or complaint but even after this case was presented, Match.com continued to denounce screening its users until they were forced to settle with Markin and agree to the process. Match also agreed to cross reference members with the national sex registries, but “the agreement is not legally binding or enforceable” (Horcher 2). Match.com is only one example of websites abusing their freedom at the cost of their users safety and peace of mind. Dating fraud is prevalent in today’s society, a world that runs on Wi-Fi. Any person can effortlessly sign up somewhere online, create a new identity for themselves, and no one would be the wiser. Not until scam hits or the registered sex offender organizes a physical meeting, but by then it is too

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