One of the toughest things about a paid dating site like Match.com is figuring out if someone has a paid subscription or is just a free member.
There’s no marking on their profile to indicate if they’re paying, and if you email someone who hasn’t paid, they can’t see their inbox. Your perfectly crafted first contact email could be rotting away, never to be seen by your potential beloved’s eyes.
WTF, right? Well, this is by design, in a clever marketing ploy that catches thousands of people a year.
Sucks, right? Well, you have to remember that the majority of online dating sites are businesses first and humanitarians second.
Here are some tips on how to tell if someone is a paying member on match.com:
They have a colored profile box
When you’re scanning search results and see a colored profile box, that indicates the person has paid extra for a highlighted profile. (At the moment, that’s only $1 extra a month if you buy a 6 month package.)
They say, “Email me!“
This is a pretty obvious one, but if someone says “Email me” at the end of their profile and they haven’t squeezed in “illegal” details on how to do so outside of match.com, chances are they are (or recently were) a paying member.
Their profile references emails they’ve received
Girls are especially guilty of this one. They write a nice profile and then a few weeks later, when they’re tired of an inbox full of cut-n-paste emails, creepy emails, and the subject line “hi”, they write an addendum that goes something like this:
Please don’t email me to tell me I’m hot. Or to invite me for drinks at your hotel for the 3 days you’re in town. Or if you are still “technically” married. Or if you’re a “young 54.” If you don’t match my ideal man, I’m not going to write you back, so just don’t waste your time. Thanks.
I hate those paragraphs, but I fully understand them because I’ve gotten those emails. It gets frustrating, and sadly, adding that paragraph doesn’t make the undesirables email you any less frequently. (It also scares away some of the good guys.)
But! If she’s got one of these in her profile, she can get email! (Just make sure you don’t add yourself to the list of undesirables.)
They are almost always active
Match.com allows you to see when the person last logged in to their account. Chances are that if the person’s been inactive for more than a week, they are not a paid member. There’s always the odd case of someone being on vacation, but more often than not, it means they set up the account, poked around for a bit, and forgot about it.
Save your emailing efforts for people who have been active within the past few days. These are the folks who are most serious about finding love, and most likely to have a paid account.
Option: Get Email Read Notifications
This option is currently on the list of add-ons you can get for $1 a month with a new subscription. It is a LIFESAVER if you’re one of those people who gets antsy about wondering if someone can’t email you or hasn’t emailed you. Saves you a lot of worry, wonder, and heartache.
Option: Get a Platinum Membership
Platinum membership is an add-on service being test-run in certain markets. It includes the following features:
- You are able to email with ANY member, paid or unpaid.
- Unpaid members will be able to see you as Platinum in search results and will be able to email you.
Moral of the Story
There are going to be people who don’t email you back. However, there are also people who are unpaid members who see the little “You have email!” notification and curiosity eats at them for two weeks until they finally cave, pay for a membership, and read your email.
It better be a good one!
I solve many, many more Match.com mysteries in my ebook: You Geek, They Grok: A Geek’s Guide to Leveling Up Your Online Dating Game. Click here to check it out.
Happy dating, geek friends.
About e
The “they are almost always active” point is possibly a sign it’s a fake profile crafted by the online dating website. Another unmistakable sign that the profile is fake is that they are ALWAYS online when you go online. Like, ALWAYS.
.-= AndThatsWhyYoureSingle´s last blog ..If He Asks You Back To His Place On Date 1, Is That a Bad Sign? =-.
@ Moxie – It depends. There are plenty of women who check in on their profile daily, and would show up as “Active within 24 hours” pretty much every day.
The ones that are always available for IMs 24/7 are definitely worth raising an eyebrow over…
Hi e
I’ve got a quick question regarding this topic – hope you can help. If I send an email to someone through Match, do they get an automated message informing them of this sent to their original registered email account (gmail or hotmail or whatever)?
Or do you physically need to login to Match to even find out that someone has contacted you there?
Hope that makes sense.
Gracias
@gert – Only if they’re a paid subscriber. If they’re not paid, they’ll see a mail notification but won’t be able to see who sent it or read it.
Also, remember that their is now an iPhone app so someone could check their profile every day and also be available for IMs too.
Out of curiousity, does Match ever list a person as “online now” if in fact the person is not online? Or update a person’s profile to say active within 24 hrs if the person was not active in weeks? I was dating someone for a month and we talked about and decided to become exclusive. Two days later as I am cancelling my account- I check his- and wham! it says “online now”. Now he could have been doing the exact same thing I was… so I called him to tease him about it. He flat out denied that he was online. He said he had not been online on Match in weeks. Obviously this led to a bit deeper discussion because then I had to figure out if he was being honest… A BIG DEAL when you are starting a relationship. He swore up and down that he had not been on. And said Match, for marketing reasons, must have played with his account. I found this hard to believe. SO two days later I went back to check and again it said online within 24 hrs…again!
Sadly I had to cut ties because I really can’t believe Match would do that. Can you tell me if I am wrong?
Like Tiredofthegame, I’m trying to figure out the “Online Now” thing – trust is difficult at the start of a relationship… my guy is on his way to the airport, driving and off of his phone (just hung up), yet “Online now”. Here’s what Match says. I think I am going to go testing…
The “Online Now/Active Within” status field indicates how recently a member has utilized the Match.com service through various methods. This status field is updated under these circumstances:
•The member has logged in to the site within the last hour
•The member has accessed their Match.com by Mail messages in their registered email address
•The member has sent or replied to Match.com messages from their registered email address
The “Online Now” feature allows you to see which of your fellow Match.com members are online. Generally speaking, if “Online Now” is indicated on a member’s profile, it means that member has been active on the site or in their Match.com messages within the last hour.
Since all of our members benefit from knowing how recently other members have been active on the site, we do not currently have a feature that enables you to turn this status field off.
Question? Would you have had to go to the match.com site to receive an email saying someone may be interested? Just trying to find out why someone would have gotten an email
@KD – If you are a non-paying member, you will get a notification from Match saying that someone emailed you. In order to read that person’s email, you must have a paying subscription.
If you are a paying member, email received from other paying members will/can come directly to your mailbox, if you wish.
I know this is somewhat of an old post but I was wondering if you could help me with something. I did the 3 day free trial because there was this ONE guy that I was really interested in. I emailed him last night around 10pm, about an hour later it said that the email had been read. I received no reply, and ironically enough he never even checked my profile. Now, it hasn’t even been close to 24 hours and his profile says “Active within 3 days” (it’s now afternoon the very next day). Unless I’m missing something, how is it possible for him to have read my email with a “Active within 3 days” status, what happened to “Active within 24 hours”? I was wondering if maybe this was a gimmick?
@V – The “Active In” timer is pretty inaccurate. Now, as far as the Email Read notification… it *might* trigger if someone’s read the email Match sends to them, instead of actually logging into the site to read it there. I’ll ping my contact at Match to ask about that.
Thank you! I would really appreciate that!
I would like to know the answer to this too.
I’ve sent emails to non subscribers, and it will say ‘read’ after a couple hours. How did they read it? I thought only subscribers could do this?
Then I go to the profile and it says that they haven’t been active within the last 3 days?
It doesn’t show them going to my profile either.
So what is up with that? Seems like the feature we pay for isn’t working or it’s misleading.
I’m really starting to think that almost every profile on Match.com are fake profiles by the staff.
@Chris: The “last active” dates are notoriously “buggy.” Whether this is working as intended or not… well, nobody’s saying. From what I know, only subscribers can read emails.
The indication of when someone was last online can be triggered by them simply stepping through their normal email inbox and reading the daily email from Match listing potential matches (or not even reading it – just deleting it). The pics have an address which must trigger the Match online counter.
This really sucks – it can give people a lot of grief when they are trying to determine if their bf/gf is really being exclusive. It did for me.
Hey e, long time listener, first time caller lol.
Anyways this may be more of a female characteristic, but I’m not sure… So I send some emails to this girl on match who has very similar interests as me. I get no reply…bummer. Do a little research and find out about the nonsubscriber shinanigans and decide to invest in email read notifications. After doing so it says she read them. Now, I would just end it there but she ended up updating her profile saying she can’t email right now but its ok if others email her….? What do you think e, was she a subscriber before and no longer is, but can still read emails??? Thanks
It could be that her subscription recently expired.
Also, “some emails?” If she didn’t reply the first time, sending multiple follow-ups is only going to send her one message: that you’re creepy and stalking her. 
Granted it was quite a few months ago, but is what “PBJ” said true? Just reading the email, even without clikcing through to the site can lead to it reading “active within 24 hours?” I do believe at one point my GF had a full account, and while none of the pictures seem to have been updated the account does say Active within 24 hours – Active within 5 days.
Yes I realize monitoring it will drive me crazy and lead to bad things, but that is why I ask before bringing it up to her.
@DJM – There is a good amount of anecdotal evidence that the “Active in” code does not provide 100% accurate results. Match.com has not made any official statements affirming or denying this.
I HAVE SUSPENDED MY MATCH MEMBERSHIP BUT STILL HAVE TIME LEFT ON IT. THE IPHONE APP IS DOWNLOADED ON MY IPHONE. IF I GET A NOTIFICATION ON THE IPHONE FROM THE MATCH APP DO I SHOW UP AS ACTIVE WITHIN 24 HOURS ON THE MAIN MATCH WEBSITE WHETHER OR NOT I’VE CHOSEN TO HIDE MY PROFILE ? I NEVER DELETED OR CHANGED ANYTHING WITH THE MATCH APP SO WONDERING HOW IT EFFECTS WHETHER OR NOT IT LOOKS LIKE I’VE ONLINE WITHIN A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF TIME EVEN IF I HAVEN’T BEEN. MY BF CLAIMS I WAS ACTIVE WITHIN 24 HOURS FOR TWO CONSECUTIVE DAYS AND I 100% WASN’T – AT LEAST INTENTIONALLY. I WANT TO GIVE HIM ALL THE POSSIBILITIES AS TO WHY I SHOWED UP THIS WAY. THANKS.
@Lisa – I wouldn’t be surprised if the fact that your phone is still receiving Match updates is flagging your account as active. Try uninstalling the app and give it a few days, then have someone check your account status.
Thanks. So if I get a notification via my email and via the app, will it show me as active even if i haven’t opened them?
Hello,
I was wondering…if someone is online but it doesn’t have an option to IM them, does that mean they are not a paying member?
I’m starting to think that the “email read” notification service is BS. I sent out an email tonight to a girl who was active within the last 24 hours. Less than an hour later, I checked my Match emails to see if any from the past few days had been read (apparently, all of them had, almost immediately). The girl I had emailed about half an hour previously had apparently read my email already. I ran my standard search again, and there she is five pages down – still only active in the last 24 hours.
If the notification system was working properly and she read an email of mine in the last 30 minutes, surely her “online within” status should have been “within one hour”? Something is very fishy there. Even if Match is not deliberately tagging emails as read when they have not been, if the system is unreliable it is worthless. I think I will go back to OKC.
@Elle – I want to say that you have the option to turn off IMs if you don’t wish to use that feature. But yes, any and all communication features are for paid members only.
This is an old discussion, but I’m chiming in anyway. I’m a woman who just cancelled her account on match.com because they continue to say that I’m “online now” when I’m not. I’m furious about it, actually, because I’ve taken every measure to ensure that I’m fully logged out and that that my account settings have auto sign-in unchecked. I had 13000 views between November and February alone, so I’m convinced that because I have a good profile, they’re using it for marketing purposes. To the girl whose new man claimed the same thing, he may have been telling the truth.
Me and my BF meet on match and have been dating for a yr and I saw he was active within 2 weeks but when i asked him he said he did not sign back up and when he showed me his account it says to subscribe now, but why would his profile show active when he really isnt…very confusing please help
@e7 – I guess the first question is why did you feel the need to check up on him?
If you’re feeling that something is going downhill in your relationship and he may be cheating on you, that’s something you need to take up in a conversation with him.
Other commenters here have had similar stories to yours. It seems that Match’s system for displaying the activity of a particular profile isn’t very accurate.
At the moment, your choices are these:
- Trust Match (despite evidence that they aren’t accurate with these dates) and dump your boyfriend.
- Trust your boyfriend and stop trying to prove he’s a cheater by checking dating sites for him.
Hello,
I recently had a date with a man who was telling me that there are fake profiles on ther. Nothing has alerted me of that, but, then again, I’m a girl so I am probably contacted more than doing the intial contacting. One thing that was weird about what he was saying, though, is that he claimed that match pays people to go on dates. When I asked how he knew something like this, he changed the subject repeatedly. I only paid about $80 for an entire year (with my 6 months free) so I don’t see how this would be profitable, but he really got me a little paranoid about some of the dates I’ve been on. Who knows, maybe that was his intention. I just typed my question into google and found this little blog.
Does match pay people to go on dates? Why did he say that? Thank you
@OCS – I’ve never heard any rumors about Match paying people to go on dates. As for fake profiles, you’ll find those on every dating site. Oftentimes, when criminals steal a credit card, they’ll open several online dating accounts in the hopes to run a sweetheart scam and steal some money from someone. The good news is that dating sites are always looking for these profiles and shutting them down as quickly as possible.
This is in response to some of the previous post regarding the ‘bugginess’ of a users online status / last online.
I have been a software developer for more than 25 years. I can say with great confidence that it is very easy to be extremely exact when it comes to determining when a user was last online. Once the user logs in successfully regardles of internet or phone, the application inserts a record into a table with the users ID, date and time stamp. Most likey there are other little goodies like location (based on IP or cell tower id).
Upon another user refreshing the page in the online site, each profile displayed is a combination of the following query:
Select Top 1
From LoggonHistory
Order by InsertedDate desc
This will bring the last historical record of the user logging on in reverse chronilogical order. Of course the page has to identify which profiles are to be displayed and wrap that query around the one above. As you may now determine, this is the last login time. Not the last log out time. Tracking log out is not as dependable due to a users computer crashing, browser timeout etc. In addition each time you click around the site they can update the last online record with the current date and time.
I can guarentee the development staff at the online sites are very skilled about tracking each time you logon, click and any other event that you drive while on there site. I would even say they track the duration of time that you browse each profile to obtain analytics about the demographics of what is appealing. They can then turn around and show you what you might like, keeping your interest and squeezing each penny from your wallet….
My two cents.
CXG
I see sometimes on girls profile ( IM me now ) , I click on it and type some words ,then girl dosen`t respond ,shortly ,this message disappear from the girl profile ,who basically control this feature ?
@Omar – I’m betting that the person either logged off or turned off their IMs.
I have a question about something I don’t believe I have seen addressed, and frankly, it’s driving me insane, but before I say anything (if I do), I’d like to know what’s going on, if anything at all.
I know my way around Match.com really well and the following occurred to me a few years ago and is now applicable today (again), but I never found an answer for it. I hope someone can help!
I hope how I explain it makes sense. I’ll start with the most recent scenario. My boyfriend’s profile was active a few weeks ago after being hidden because of our relationship. (I’ll spare you the reasons why I looked for his profile as well as why it’s now hidden). For the longest time, I have known you can click an old email received through Match.com; so xyz@talkmatch.com, and even if someone has their profile hidden, it will give you their activity (active within 24 hours, etc.), if you click on the profile within the email. So, you can see if someone with a hidden profile is perusing Match. I have tested it with my own profile via an email someone replied to using their personal account with the body of the text being from Match, so my profile shows up in this email. If I click my own profile within the email it will say when I last logged in. BUT, it will not say “online now.” The second I log in from either my laptop or my phone, the activity for my profile says, “active within 1 hour,” and so on. It seems as soon as it’s been over an hour, it bumps to “active within 24 hours, and then within 3 days, etc.” Thus far, it’s been absolutely accurate.
Now, I checked my boyfriend’s account the same way, but it’s not showing the activity, so what I did was find the exact address from my browser for when his profile was live on the site. When I go to this address, it’s giving me the same information as stated above upon testing my profile. Which leads me to this question – could an iPad app, or not logging out of Match.com from your browser (utilizing the auto-login feature), show someone as having logged in when possibly they haven’t? I did try the browser; I left myself logged in and checked from my phone and sure enough, after an hour or so it would switch from “active within 1 hour, to active within 24 hours.”
I have heard that possibly a different browser, say, my boyfriend’s Safari or Firefox on a Mac might possibly behave differently and if he’s never logged out (he has a billion tabs open all the time), then the browser might recognize activity and update the activity date?
One of the many reasons I ask, besides the obvious, is that I can’t imagine someone lurking around Match.com for as many times as I see his profile as, “active within 1 hour.” if their profile is hidden! It will show as active 4 or 5 times a day. I just can’t imagine lurking around that much with nothing to do but, well, lurk. I guess you can wink and send emails, but who’s going to respond to an email if they can’t see the person’s profile? I don’t know what to do!
I know, I know, it’s probably pretty obvious, but I’m trying to find out FOR SURE before I dump him. I try not to jump the gun and I have personally had many experiences with Match.co saying I’m active when in fact I haven’t been for days or weeks. It’s the only reason I am questioning this. Additionally I have heard that if you open a Match.com email from your personal email account, that just opening it will trigger an activity update. Which, if he’s opening them and receiving them is a big problem, too.
Anyone? I’m finished with online dating!
I am using match.com for 3 years, now (happen evryday for 3 weeks) I receive emails, and winks from people I can’t see their profiles. it happened to me 6 times this months, and today I wrote again(after waiting for any thing from them) I connected with live chat and I talked with a representative, unfortunately the explication he gave to me was so lame that I am very suspicious that match.com uses people to maintain the site. After finished the conversation that was so invalid I received (2 minutes later) another fake winks, they play with customers without remors, I never ever cross my mind that match.com were like that…
First, I am a 56 yr old male very technologically challenged., About a week ago I decided to join Match.com price not bad, something to play around with. Twice divorced so looking for friendship, not wife. Here is tech question, I am getting much more activity on my verizon Iphone 5 than my Gmail acct on this lap top. What is wrong. Thanks Much
I think I just wasted money on this site. I joined Match and Chemistry after getting sick of the creeps on OkCupid. Chemistry.com is a total waste because they give me matched WAY out of my required mileage. Really!? And with Match I see a lot of awesome guys that I’d love to get to know, but none of them are subscribers. It’s such a scam! Why bother making a page when you’re not going to bother emailing people? I haven’t received one email, not even from a creepy old guy and I know I’m an attractive 25 year old. I’ve received a bunch of winks, but again from creepy dudes, plus winks are showing signs of laziness. I just don’t get Match and the point of not being subscribed. What a waste of money!!
Personally, I think that a person’s activity should not be revealed on match.com and it’s a factor that is compelling me to quit the site. For example, I started dating someone on the site and we’ve only been on a couple of dates. I’m interested but at this point I’m just exploring and I’d like to date others as well to get a better sense of who might be a good fit. I don’t want the guy that I’m seeing to see that I still active on the site and frankly it’s none of his business at this point. I feel though that seeing that I’m active jepardizes our budding relationship when it shouldn’t. I really feel that it’s an infringement on privacy.
I’m a guy who signed up for it a bit ago and I’m having similar issues. I’m an attractive guy, well educated, sarcastic, and witty… pretty much the exact description of what every woman is looking for on the site. I was planning on browsing for a bit and then getting a paid membership, but had to suddenly do a short term move away from where I normally live. It is a temporary move, but I didn’t want to be lying on my profile so I just hid it. I have it set to a random email I don’t use much. I recently opened that email (I use it when signing up for websites/forums) It turns out I have winks and emails, even though my profile is hidden (which I double checked). On top of that, I turned off auto-login, logged off, cleared my history/cookies/cache etc. I checked it on my phone and it STILL says I’m online. I don’t have any other devices that would be logged in, and I can’t figure out for the life of me why it still says that.
So as a guy trying to figure out why the hell it still lists me online, I’d recommend to the women not to overreact to it. I stumbled on this website looking for people who have the exact same issue, and I still have yet to find any solution. It’s extremely frustrating to me trying to figure it out, let alone if I was in a relationship and it was hanging over our head. Don’t take it as the end-all-be-all of your relationship.