UK dating site pulls out 'Intimate Encounters' option to ward off sleazy men

The founder of one of Britain's biggest dating website has now decided to take radical action to root out fake and sleazy profiles, after finding that many of the "women" who use the hook-ups section of his site are actually men in disguise.

Writing to members on Monday, Markus Frind, the Canadian founder of Plenty of Fish (POF), said that he had been forced to make a series of changes to its membership rules because too many male users are harassing women for sex, the Independent reported.

The entrepreneur said that he had decided to scrap the "Intimate Encounters" option on the POF site due to complaints from some of its female users suffering unwanted attention.

In a message sent to all members, he said that only 6,041 of the 3.3 million people who use the site every day are in fact women looking for no-strings-attached trysts - adding "the ones with hot pictures are mostly men pretending to be women."

The computer systems graduate who founded the website - which now has a turnover of more than 10 million dollars a year - in 2003, said he now wants it to now focus on "meaningful relationships.