1. It seems to me that a sense of vulnerability and breach of trust would be bigger factors here. Compare, for example, concerns that many people have about personal information about minors being online, or the aversion that many users have of putting photos of family members online at Flickr. The Match.com suit seems to be a breach of trust, as if the allegations are true then the employee may have used special access to personal information to contact the user in a way other than what was intended by the submission of the personal info. And the Yahoo suit is probably motivated in part by the loss of security presumed to be offered by limiting exposure of one's personal info to only people living in the area vs. the "wierdos" lurking in the placeless internet in general. Given that such a sense of security is probably unfounded (there are wierdos in your town too!) the actual harm done may be less than alleged, but the feelings of the litigants seem more complex than just loneliness and disappointment.

Basic use of online dating services could be explained by loneliness, but that too would probably sell short the usefulness these services have provided for people who want their social connections as information-enabled as possible. I've never used anything like this, but I don't think you're being fair to those who do. Or to the people in these cases.

Compared to the threats by school districts to sue MySpace, these suits seem downright legitimate!

Posted at 8:11PM on Dec 18th 2005 by Marshall Kirkpatrick

2. I concur with Marshall about the role of loneliness. The implication of loneliness is that the user was jilted, rebuffed, disappointed by a relationship that went south, and decided to exact revenge. But it ain't necessarily so, and your implication is an awful lot like a 'blame the victim' response.

Posted at 8:11PM on Dec 18th 2005 by David

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Posted at 8:11PM on Dec 18th 2005 by buntibubli indian dating website