Fly-by-night sites

Signs advertising local online dating services have cropped up on utility poles in busy traffic locations, but experts say the sites may be little more than an invitation to telemarketers and spam e-mail.
Recently tacked up to poles on Rte. 126 in Bellingham, just north of the intersection with Interstate 495, a set of signs all read: "Single?" below which they provide the Web address bellinghamsingles.org.
But online dating expert Evan Marc Katz said he believes the site -- and its mirror image, milfordsingles.org -- may simply be fronts to snag e-mail, telephone numbers and other personal information to sell to advertisers and marketers."I would guess these sites are simply trying to collect information for an e-mail list to market something else," said Katz, CEO of the company e-cyrano.com and author of a best-selling book on Internet dating.
In a quick review of the site, Katz chuckled at the date below a picture of a happy couple on the bellinghamsingles.org site.
"Look here, they got married in 1996," Katz said. "That’s before (industry giant) Match.com was started. Maybe Match.com stole their idea," he joked.
Neither the bellinghamsingles nor milfordsingles sites provide any company contact information. Both Web site addresses are registered to domainsbyproxy.com, a Scottsdale, Ariz., company that referred all inquiries to an invalid e-mail address.
An unrelated site, franklinsingles.org, is registered to IMAT Group, located in Baroda, India. Completion of its registration page leads users to a series of party pictures, and an odd claim: "We are not an online dating service and we are not a nonprofit organization." The site goes on to explain it is a "great resource for singles looking for a serious relationship!"
Completing the initial registration form online at bellinghamsingles.org -- which requires a home phone, e-mail address and annual income range, among other items -- users are told they "will be contacted" by a relationship specialist.
But the sites don’t seem commercially viable, according to Katz. Plenty of sites attempt to match singles around areas of interest. For example, there is a dating site (trekpassions.com) for fans of "Star Trek" and science fiction. But trying to bring them together based on whether they live in a relatively small town, is a difficult proposition.
"If you restrict the use of a site to singles living in Bellingham, and half the town is married, it’s very limited," Katz said.
And when it comes to Internet dating sites, some among those the businesses are trying to attract, see no advantage to going local.
"You don’t know really who’s on the other side of the computer with any of these sites," said Jetta Panagopolous, who works at Dean College. "And I wouldn’t use (franklinsingles) because there could be creepy people in Franklin."
Second-year Dean student Philip Yu agreed. "It doesn’t matter if it’s franklinsingles," he said. "People could be lying about who they are...I have enough friends around here anyway."The popularity of Internet dating sites is a given these days, with annual estimates of 100,000 marriages resulting because of online matches, according to Online Dating Magazine. People waiting longer to get married, along with evermore hectic work schedules, make the Internet dating sites attractive, according to Lucille Lawless, a sociology instructor at Framingham State College.
"In an already busy, crowded life, these sites allow people to make connections on their own terms with minimal effort," said Lawless.
"But let the (user) beware," cautioned Katz. "You’re probably going to get the best results registering with online services you’ve heard of."
Rick Holland can be reached at 508-634-7505 or rholland@cnc.com.