1. Badoo. This site is the biggest offender. They have a higher percent of scammers than any other dating site, mostly from Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, etc. which are the scam capitals of the world. The list of countries in which they are the most popular in is absolutely appalling. Their site is more established in the big scamming countries than anywhere else. Take a look at the top 5 countries they are most popular in:

Cameroon 6

Democratic Republic of Congo 6

Cote d’Ivoire 13

Colombia 23

Nigeria 23

They are the 13th most popular site in Cote d’Ivoire, while they are the 1,765th most popular site in the US. Utterly astounding.

2. ChristianMingle. Scammers are well known for being religious in their profiles. Maybe they think it will help to build up trust among their victims. Either way, ChristianMingle is second on the list of having the highest percent of scammers.

3. Tagged. Next up is Tagged. Pretty hard to find a real person on this site.

4. Facebook. While it is the most popular social network, most people are unaware that Facebook has more registered 419 scammers than all dating sites combined. It’s nearly impossible to use Facebook and not get multiple friend requests mysteriously from very cute girls, etc. who live on the other side of the world and who you’ve never seen in your life.

5. Twitter. About the same percent of scammers as Match, however, they don’t clear them off the site by any means at all or prevent them from interacting with other real members.

6. Match. While Match does a decent job of clearing scammers from their real members, they are an absolute hotbed for illegal 419 activity. By not utilizing much TV and radio advertising like their competitor eHarmony who has a significantly lower scammer index from our research, they have ranked theirselves up with the best of them. I also find it very interesting that they have such a strategic partnership with no other than Yahoo!, the company well known for being the email provider of choice to 419 scammers, hence the name of the well known scammer group ‘the yahoo boys.’

7. Zoosk. Millions of members with millions of scammers registered. They do a decent job of clearing some of the fakes from the real members.

In no way does this list clear the names of smaller time sites like Cupid.com, etc. We believe there are many other smaller sites with similar high percents of scammers, but there is currently not enough data from external aggregating sources such as Alexa to provide us with this data. We would currently consider eHarmony to be the safest site from scams and another notable site that has been lowering its scam reputation to be PlentyOfFish.

The girl was pretty, sure. We met at a restaurant and I immediately bought her a drink. Before the conversation really started I could see myself out and about with her, having another meal – you know, making her my girlfriend. Silly me, because once we started talking I realized that, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, we had nothing in common.

What a night. The awkwardness returned once we both figured out we weren’t meant for one another (in reality our personalities were so opposing I think we hated each other) and of course, after such a long and tedious meal, I had to pay for it. And her taxi – after the $200 bottle of wine she made me buy.

This story got me thinking how online dating is pretty neat. That entire situation could’ve been avoided if I’d just found out a little more about the girl and her personality before diving in – and that’s something you can do here, on the internet, right now. There’s tons of fish in the sea for both sexes waiting to be talked to, and if you can make that bond with them before you set off for the first date, you know you’re going to succeed. Save yourself the humiliation and a crippling meal bill.

And the thing about Confirio? It’s totally free.

So go out there. Play the game, chat with some people – make the sparks fly. There’s too many success stories out there to avoid something as good as this. If you already have a good story or two to tell about online dating, you know how good you’ve got it – and you don’t, you will soon.

Thank me later.

The Most Popular Dating Sites

ALL Information Current as of Today October 23, 2010

For all the numbers we list below, we did NOT find them hearsay from a reference a site references that was out of date, etc.  We also did not pry into confidential information not legally visible to us. All methods to obtain numbers were completely legal and all numbers were obtained directly from the publicly available sites themselves by simply perusing code. We believe we have obtained numbers down to the exact digit ourselves, however, we will only list numbers in the millions. The one exception to this was for the great guys down at OkCupid, with whom we could not find any convincing numbers in their code. Instead we found they listed 3.5 million as their active member count and using that in combination with some other things we are going to take a rough guess and say they have about 9 million members simply for your reference so the list is more complete.

Note that most of the most popular dating sites have many members all over the world and while it is a lot cheaper to build up the member count by enlisting every individual in e.g. India, we thought it useful to list a rough guess of what we think is the amount of members they have in the United States using audience information provided from Alexa.com. As a side note to our research, monthly costs are all listed and accurate as of today as well.

If you work for any of the sites listed, feel free to contact us to have any inaccurate information modified.

• If you subscribe, non-subscribers can reply FREE
• We show percent matches which incorporate MUCH more advanced matching technology
• We take the subjectiveness out of online dating
• We determine what you are really interested in from your user interactions and NOT from multiple choice questions
• We cost MUCH LESS
• We have a user friendly and attractive site design

Unlike many other paid dating sites like eHarmony, Match, Zoosk, and Chemistry, EVEN IF you pay for their subscription, people cannot reply to your messages! Since most people at these sites are not subscribers, chances are very high you will message someone that is not a subscriber. Now what do you think the chance of someone paying AT LEAST $30 or $40 (the minimum cost to join these sites) is to just reply to your 1 message? Nearly zero right? Right! So by becoming a member at these other sites you will be handing over a ton of money just to find out they don’t work. Confirio is very different. Once you subscribe, anyone you contact can reply to your message so that problem is completely solved.

The other factor that separates us from the crowd is that we are one of the only sites to run millions of computer algorithms that are very intense on the servers we use to run our site and to give you an actual PERCENT match to show you exactly how well we think you match each person. It is extremely expensive to run these algorithms let alone the huge cost of DESIGNING and creating these algorithms which is why most of our competitors don’t actually do much matching. They may have millions of members, but they don’t do anything to sort them and show you who your best match is besides allowing you to filter your results. Now what good is it going to do for you if you use a filter for example to not show anyone that drinks if the one person who actually matches everything about you best drinks occasionally? Well you are going to not be seeing some of your potentially highest matches. Unless you have the time to read about a million profiles, you will not be finding your best match on these sites and will most likely end up finding someone who hardly matches you because that’s what your’re going to get if you only go through a couple hundred profiles. Sites like eHarmony do use algorithms to match you, though we believe ours are MUCH more accurate, however they DO NOT show you your exact percent match for all the profiles they have on their site. Confirio doesn’t just show you a few matches in your area, we let you know how well everyone matches you.

Another thing Confirio does that really differentiates itself is that it doesn’t fall into the typical dating site stereotype having users that pretend to be who they are not. The reason is on other dating sites they ask you subjective questions about yourself that can be manipulated. For example, eHarmony and many other sites simply ask you how attractive you are and if you are overweight. Yeah right! Like people are going to accurately write themselves down as overweight and unattractive. Confirio does not GUESS at EXTREMELY KEY questions such as these. We obtain factual information about you that you cannot lie about such as your weight, height, how often you went to the gym LAST YEAR and not how much you plan on going starting today ;). We also have MILLIONS of ratings of all the photos on our site from various users that we use to score users’ attractiveness. And that is just one extra thing we do.

Confirio is also probably the only site that takes care of the most important aspect of dating. By gauging the type of users you add to your favorites and interact with on our site we find out exactly the types of people you are most interested in. Other sites attempt to ask you who you think you are interested in through multiple choice questions which is a incomplete and much more complicated process than they perceive. Resultingly they deliver lesser quality matches.

All in all, Confirio is a masterfully crafted site where we have put much thought into each aspect of our site to deliver you the highest quality matches with the least amount of frustration on your side. To put it simply: Confirio offers MUCH MORE than all other paid dating sites at a price MUCH LOWER.

Act your age. I’ve found out (sadly from my own misadventures) that there’s nothing worse than a forty something year old woman or man trying to fit in with the twenty something crowd. The younger generation is, well, younger, and while you might find someone who wants to date an older man/woman, you’re probably not going to find someone who you’ll have a chance at a serious relationship with. Instead, try scenes that reflect your interests - cooking classes, gyms, scrabble groups, whatever.

Stick with what you know, because like I said, some things haven’t changed. Women still want a man who is honest and who doesn’t play games. They still want a man who will call when he says he will, who will hold the door open for them on occasion, who will bring flowers for no reason. These “old fashioned” traits are charming, especially to a woman who is jaded from dating plenty of losers.

Don’t be afraid to try something new. When you meet a guy or gal who you have a connection with, don’t be afraid to pull out new tricks too. If you want to try taking him or her to do something you’ve always wanted to do, but never done, don’t be afraid to suggest it. Who knows, the other person might like the idea of trying skydiving, or driving Route 66, or going to a hot dog eating contest. At our age, dating should be about having fun and connecting, not being afraid.