As Salam Alaykum Sisters
I hope that this email reaches you in good health and emaan as we are now in the last ten days of Ramadhaan.
I am writing to seek your feedback in light of recent events at ClickMuslim.
Prior to Ramadhaan, we had recieved a messages from some sisters stating that some users were just on ClickMuslim to waste their (our Sisters) time, and some were just downright rude in their communications.
A few had recieved unwanted solicitations for advancing money towards them as well as responses from people that were just looking for a visa and not a wife.
These users were promptly removed as we have a no nonesense policy when it comes to this kind of behaviour.
In order to put up a front door to stop these users we introduced a subscription for all brothers, unlike other websites our charges are really very nominal and not really geared at making a huge profit, but they do go some way (though not entirely) to contributing towards the upkeep and maintenance of ClickMuslim.
Despite this we have had cases where users registered as males have used fraudulent credit cards and we have immediately shut their accounts down in order to protect our Sisters.
Al Hamdulillaah the brothers who were serious about finding a muslim to marry subscribed to ClickMuslim.
Since then we have had unscrupulous individuals from Nigeria and Sierra Leone registering as sisters on ClickMuslim who state that their residential addresses are in either the USA, Canada, UK and Australia.
ClickMuslim does everything it can to filter out fraudsters and spammers by blocking them from registering if their IP Address does not match country a user states they are from on their profile. However some of unscrupulous users get through using anonymous proxies that mask the geographical location of their IP Address.
As long as users continue to communicate with the ClickMuslim environment we can help provide a good measure of safety for all of our users and alert certain brothers and sisters immediately where necessary if we detect anything suspicious.
These fraudsters generally try and get a user to communicate outside of the ClickMuslim environment i.e. through personal emails, MSN and Yahoo Messenger etc where we have no control.
We have even sent out privacy and security tips to our users a while back
That being said a few of the Brothers who have subscribed ClickMuslim have been approached by female users to communicate outside of ClickMuslim and then at some point they have been requested to wire money to Nigeria or Sierra Leone.
This really wastes time for those of our brothers who have subscribed and are genuinely looking to find a muslim wife inshallaah.
It pains me that a brother has recently lost his money as result of these fraudsters claiming to be muslim sisters.
I am sure the majority of sisters registered on ClickMuslim are genuine sisters looking to find a muslim husband to marry.
A few bad apples registered on ClickMuslim as sisters took advantage of the fact that we were providing a free service for muslim sisters.
This meant that when a genuine sister contacted or sent an interest to a brother, the brother thinks that the sister is not genuine.
At ClickMuslim some brothers have even accused us of putting up fake profiles to defraud them, you know because we are writing to you that your profile was placed on ClickMuslim by YOU.
ClickMuslim will NEVER place a fake profile on the website just in order to attract more users.
We have been running for just over three months and have already had 3500 that may seem fine but when people register for free how can we show that they are really genuine in terms of whether they are on ClickMuslim to find a muslim partner looking for marriage as there is no way of tracing an individual if they cause malice to another user if website is free.
This is certainly not final, but in light recent events we are proposing to put up a front door for ALL members that includes Brothers and Sisters so that they have to take out a subscription to use ClickMuslim.
In doing so you would be using a credit card to verify you are genuine to all the other users.
How will taking out a subscription verify a user is genuine?
This will mean that a users credit/debit card is linked to a bank account which can then be linked to a physical address, telephone number etc.
Your personal information will always remain private, it will help YOU to ensure that law enforcement agencies can trace an individual to a physical address should you happen to be a victim of criminal activity such as fraud from another person using ClickMuslim.
We really do feel that this measure of safety is necessary for all of our members inshallaah.
It is in light of this that we are proposing, charging a nominal subscription to ALL members brothers and sisters to help ensure the safety of all of our community at ClickMuslim.
The cost is likely to be minimal (in the region of $5-$9/Month) when compared to the price we put on the safety of all of our users inshallaah and still so much less than all the other sites out there that charge too much.
We believe at ClickMuslim we are different because we want to engage in a dialogue with you, and seek your consultation on how we can help make ClickMuslim a safe environment for you. If we provide everyone with a chance to have their say it would only be for the greater good for everyone of our members inshallaah.
We would like to invite your ideas on the issues raised above you can either reply back to this email inshallaah or write on our blog which is at blog.ClickMuslim.com, we invite you to have your say inshallaah.
Finally it is our duty as Muslims to help protect each other inshallaah.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Team ClickMuslim
