You may not think fake profiles on the Web are a big deal, but recent news shows otherwise with a Craiglist fake profiler being sued and the case where faking MySpace information may become a federal crime. As long as there’s money in creating fake profiles online, there will be seedy people there to do it.

If you never knew about the many ways people use fake profiles to exploit people, hopefully, you’ve learned a little about the motivations behind the scammers as well as ways to detect and avoid them in the future. Whether you plan on buying something from an unknown web user or merely interact with them socially, the big thing to come away with here is that you should now be more aware of the potential uses of fake profiles so that you can more comfortably navigate the Web.

Now, if you are one of these scammers, perhaps you’ve learned a little about how you really are hurting people. Whether it’s the advertiser you’re immorally and oftentimes illegally pushing, or the people you’re tricking with your fake profiles, you should be taking a deep breath and looking at how you’re exploiting others to earn your money rather than contributing something valuable. If you never care to take pride in your work and only care about money regardless of how you get it, then nothing I say will ever change your mind. But maybe… just maybe, a few of you out there that may take the first step into rethinking your online strategies… you never know.

Like MySpace and Match.com, Craigslist is targeted for fake profiles because it’s a potential advertising resource. Many Craigslist users aren’t necessarily net savvy, which makes them perfect victims for fake profile scams. With Craigslist, a scammer can easily create a fake profile, post a fake ad, and make a decent amount of cash in a very short amount of time with very little risk.

The first step for these scammers is to find an affiliate offer they think they can trick Craigslist users into signing up for. There are many types of affialite programs that work perfectly for this scam – anything from dating websites to pet training. For this example, we are going to use a dog training program as it’s a common blueprint many of these scammers follow.

So how does one profit from combining a dog training program with Craigslist? Simple, post an ad on Craigslist saying you have a newborn puppy that’s looking for a good home. Make sure to have a catching headline and let everyone know that the puppy is free as long as it’s going to a good home. Now, like I explained in the fake profiles for dating websites post, create an email address with an autoresponder on it. Have the autoresponse say something along the lines of “thanks for the interest in the puppy. I’ve had so many great responses that it’s taking awhile to go through them all. In the meantime, it’d be great if you could check out insert dog training url here. It’s a great dog training program that I’ve been using and would love it if the new owners continued the training with the puppy.”

And just like that, you’ve got your scam setup on autopilot. You’ll get a bunch of people emailing you who are interested in the puppy. You’re autoresponse will trick many of them into following your affiliate link to the dog training program that you’ll get paid for whenever any of them sign up. Sure, not all of them will sign up, but even if only a few of them do, you’ll have made a decent amount of money for very little work – especially since it’s all on auto pilot once it’s setup. There’s no dog, no real email address, and definitely no real Craigslist profile.

Another thing about this scenario is that scammers can keep doing it for different locations until they’ve been reported or until they run out of areas to trick. Even then, all they have to do is create a new fake profile, new fake ad, and new fake email address and they can start all over again with a new affiliate offer.

One reason this scam works so well is that many people are using all their net awareness on looking out for people selling them products that are faulty or don’t even exist so they lower their guard when they see something is free with no real strings attached. If you see somebody giving away a cute little puppy for free, you may just overlook that suspicious email response you get asking you to check out a puppy related product. And even if you are smart enough to sniff out the scam, there’s going to be at least a few people who aren’t so lucky.

For those scammers out there that use this tactic, you already know what you’re doing is wrong, but apparently you don’t care. Sure, you may not be directly stealing people’s money by selling them a product you don’t own, but in essence, you’re doing the very same thing. You’re involved in false advertising while breaking many of Craigslist’s rules. And while I’m no lawyer, I’m guessing that it’s incredibly illegal. Sure, you can hope that the court system stays in the dark ages with these kind of scams, but eventually it’ll catch up to you.

If you use Craigslist and run across one of these scams, the first thing you should do is notify the advertiser (the owners of the product or offer that you’re being tricked into signing up for). The advertiser usually has nothing to do with the scam and will be very upset to find out one of their affiliates are using such seedy tactics – especially when they could be potentially held liable. When you contact the advertiser and complain, you may just get that advertiser to break their relationship with the scammer. What this will do is force the scammer to sign up to be an affiliate for a new advertiser with a new product to sell – thus making them have to re-setup their whole scam. Sure, it’s only a temporary solution, but it hurts the scammer more than just going straight to Craigslist because that scammer can createa new Craigslist profile in seconds.

Jason Fortuny, the person resonsible for posting the fake profile, has the same attitude toward his online actions as many of the so-called internet marketers I’ve talked about previously. Perhaps the best example is this disturbing quote from Fortuny:

“If I made the mistake of telling secrets to someone I didn’t know online and it got out…I’d be kicking myself pretty hard. I would most definitely be shouting expletives at my computer screen. But that’s the risk we all take online, as well as in life. Whether it’s someone’s e-mail, picture, or personal ad, there’s no guarantee of identity, and no guarantee that you won’t be betrayed. And there never will be.”

That right there frightens the hell out of me. He agrees that being tricked into exposing your information and being humiliated online would be terrible – basically admitting that he did exactly what he’d hate have happen to himself. His reasoning seems to be that since the internet is already a risky place for your information, he may as well contribute to the problem by scamming people and humiliating them. This makes absolutely no sense. Just because there’s a bunch of people beating up on a kid in the corner doesn’t mean you should join in.

Many of the online dangers out there are perpetuated by individuals with the exact same attitude – that others are doing it, so why can’t I? It has taken the courts a while to catch up to the digital age – and while they still have some work to do – they are definitely making some progress. Sure, some things like the RIAA attacks are where the law has taken a few steps back, but hopefully there will soon be some accountability for these people who decide stepping on others is an acceptable means to an end.

Fortuny you decided to harm others for your own amusement. For that, I hope this court case finds in favor of the victim and if at all possible perhaps set a precedent for future scammers to be wary of.

Like social networking sites, dating websites have become big lead sources for internet marketers (aka, spammers and scammers) to attack. With online dating websites they are able to focus directly on a particularly lucrative niche – singles looking for dates. Having such a valuable and focused niche has drawn all sorts of seedy Web individuals to exploit these types of websites and users by creating fake profiles in an attempt to lure unsuspecting singles seeking net-goers.

So what can an internet marketer do with a fake online dating profile? Well, one of the biggest scams is to create a profile that is designed to attract as many emails as possible from users looking to meet people online. Once they get these emails, the marketer can then use a variety of techniques to profit from the unsuspecting victims. For instance, say I am an affiliate for a competing dating website. Perhaps I’m an affiliate of Match.com and I create a fake profile on Yahoo Personals where I claim to be a hot twenty something girl looking for a good time. Whenever somebody emails me, I could email them back saying I don’t really use Yahoo all that much anymore and that I prefer using Match because of it’s security, or special features, or any number of other BS reasons. I’d then send a link to the interested party with a link to sign up at Match with my affiliate id in there so that I’d get paid if that person decides to sign up.

Pretty dang simple and you’d be suprised how many people would actually fall for this. Most people have no clue there are people out there creating fake dating profiles purely to trick people into following some affiliate link. If you were on one of these sites and saw somebody that just seemed perfect for you but when you emailed them they said they’d prefer talking with you at another site, wouldn’t you go ahead and sign right up? I think you would.

Also, keep in mind the affiliate links they are pushing may not be to other dating sites. They could be to photo sites, adult/pornography sites, and any other number of websites and services that may be used in conjunction with an online dating lead. Also, these people may even be automatting the process so that they are autocreating profiles and autoresponding to requests so that it’s all just a “set it and forget it” system.

Think this problem isn’t really all that widespread? Think again. Most of these internet marketers care about one thing – money. They love the internet because they can hide behind their computers and pretend like they aren’t hurting anybody. Just check out this forum thread of people discussing this very topic (be warned that some of the content on that website is NSFW).

To those out there employing this scam – try to realize it’s just that… a scam. You are committing fraud and not only is it unethical, it is likely illegal. You are sending terrible leads to whatever advertiser/service you are an affiliate of, you are scamming individuals out of money, and you are hurting the services you are creating fake profiles on. You’re likely not going to care about anything I say because to you, money is everything. It beats pride, self respect, and the notion that stepping on others to make a buck is horrible. Just because you can hide behind your computer screen doesn’t mean you’re not stealing from people and helping ruin various online businesses.

For people out there looking at dating websites as a way to meet people, don’t be too discouraged by this post. Sure, there’s some BS out there that may frustrate you, but overall dating websites are still a great resource for singles. Just try to use some common sense when using these services. If a person who seems way out of your league contacts you, you may want to put your guard up. If they try to convince you they use another website or have naked photos of themself somewhere else, realize you’ve just be targetted for a scam and notify the dating website immediately so that they can disable the offending account.

As a final note, let me say that I’ve actually used dating websites quite a bit and have met some incredible people – not to mention my current girlfriend who is just amazing.

Actually, the extent to which they are going would likely criminalize most (if not all) violations of any website’s terms of service. What this means is that any time you decide to fill out a form online, if you enter any false data or in any other way violate that website’s terms of service, you could be sent to jail.

Well lying is bad right? And when you use a website you should follow that website’s guidlines right? Perhaps. But you sure as hell shouldn’t make it against the law to do otherwise.

Let’s take this a little further. Let’s say that I decide to put up a terms of service for this website and in it, I say that if you want to read any of my posts, you must sign up with your primary email, home phone number and home address. This is a rediculous terms of service, especially when you cannot trust me to not go ahead and spam the hell out of you or sell your info to the highest bidder. To make matters worse, who would really go out of their way to read every single word of every single terms of service on every single website they ever visit? Well, if the federal government has their way, perhaps you should start doing so because you could be breaking the law a thousand times over each day and you wouldn’t even know it!

Obviously I think creating fake profiles for the sake of spamming people (or in this case harassing people) is wrong, but criminalizing the act of putting in false information for websites is the greater of two evils here. A website has every right to cancel your account and deny you access if you don’t abide by their rules, but that’s just it, it’s their rules, not the government’s. Until people feel safe with their information being online, you cannot force them to release that info to every website that asks for it.