Two recent major lawsuits are threatening to shake up the way online dating services operate. A lawsuit filed against Match.com alleges that the company pays employees to email prospective members and go out on dates. A separate lawsuit, filed against Yahoo! Personals alleges that the company has padded its membership database with fake profiles.

According to Joe Tracy, publisher and editor of online dating Magazine, dating sites that allow employees to use the service in any way, other than work, are asking for trouble.

"online dating services should ban their employees from being able to participate," Tracy said on CNBC's On The Money program on Friday, November 18. "That's a conflict of interest. It's not right."

For its part, Match.com is strongly denying the allegations that it pays employees to date members. Match.com says it even has a signed affidavit from the woman who the lawsuit accuses of being an employee that says the woman is not employeed by them. According to the lawsuit, the woman supposedly went out on dates with Matthew Evans (the plaintiff in the lawsuit) as a result of being hired by Match.com to do so.

"The suit apparently was filed by Evans and his attorneys on the basis of no evidence whatsoever and without any investigation of the facts as required by federal law," said Kristin Kelly, spokeswoman for Match.com. "We are exposing this suit for what it is -- a cynical attempt to impugn the good name of Match.com, at the expense of the millions of quality single people who have entrusted their emotional futures to us. Rest assured that Match.com intends to fight back against this totally baseless attack with all of our resources."

Yahoo! Personals has yet to issue a statement on the lawsuit filed against it last month.

Online dating sites are immensely popular today. They make dating a little less risky. You can seek out potential partners without meeting them by online dating. You can share only as much as you wish in your dating profile. And you can stay anonymous until you've made a decision.

The sheer number of potential mates that can be previewed makes online dating sites a tremendous time-saver.

There are two types of online dating sites - free and paid. The question is, why pay if you can get the same free dating service? It's a difficult question to answer.