How to Detect and Avoid Online Dating Scams?

Online dating scams are frauds or scams in which cybercriminals target innocent people using dating apps, social media platforms, phone calls, and messaging apps. Scammers create fake user IDs and profiles to target users and draw them into their honey traps. Scammers exploit emotions, use love language, shower praises, and show sexual interest to convince and win the trust of their target. Once scammers have gained the confidence of their target, they start asking for money or other types of financial favors from them. Victims, in an attempt to win their love, fulfill the demands and money requests. When the fraudsters receive the money, they disappear and block the victims. This is how an online dating scam goes.

Written by R K Dutt
Published on October 7, 2024

Alarming Figures About Dating App Scams

According to the Federal Trade Commission, people in the US have lost $1.3 billion in online dating scams in the last five years alone. California is the most hit with romance scams, with 9133 cases yearly. It is a global phenomenon where criminals use the same techniques in other countries. They create fake profiles on dating and social media platforms to approach people, honeytrap them, and swindle money.

Around 452 million people are estimated to be using internet platforms to find love. Scammers are aware of these figures, and they are likely to target more people through dating apps to steal money from them. As a result, romance fraud will shoot up with the growing number of people seeking love through online dating apps. With this, fraudsters will become more active and use clever schemes to approach people and scam them. Therefore, learning how to spot and avoid dating scams is crucial.

How To Spot An Online Dating Scam?

If you are also using a dating app, social media platforms, or any other online channel to find your special one, then beware of online dating scams. Scammers can be waiting for you. They create fake profiles on dating sites and social media platforms. You must be careful while interacting with a stranger online. You should keep your eyes open to avoid scams and fraud in the quest to find true love. You must learn tips and tricks to identify dating scams and avoid unpleasant situations. This write-up offers you the best tips to detect and avoid dating scams. Here are some common signs of online dating scams:

Fake Online Profiles

Scammers use fake photos and pictures to create fake online profiles to approach their target. They use pictures of celebrities, models, and attractive individuals to catfish innocent people. Using these vague, polished, and attractive profiles, they hide their own identities. If things are not clear, then there is something fishy in it.

Hasty Professing of Love

If someone is approaching you through social media or dating apps and professing deep love quickly, then you have to be careful with such a person. The person using hasty moves and declaring love for you can be a scammer. It is a useful strategy to convince you and try to win your confidence hastily. In this situation, you should have patience and wait until the truth becomes clear to you.

Quickly Moving To Personal Chat

If you are talking to a scammer on a love app or hookup app, they will insist you move on to personal chat, share a phone number, or use another messaging app. They do so to remove you from the matchmaking apps’ protected environment and security protocols. This can be another red flag you should think over.

Asking Too Many Personal Questions

Online fraudsters will ask you too many questions about your job details, financial situation, home address, financial conditions, and family members to learn more and more about you. They try to collect as many personal details about you as possible. But you must not reveal everything about yourself. Take your time and learn about the person before you share anything with them.

Avoid Face-to-Face Meetings

Fraudsters avoid face-to-face meetings. They never meet you in person, and whenever you ask them for it, they evade. They always have something urgent at hand that they have to attend to. Due to these urgencies, you never have the chance to meet them in person.

Blackmailing with Sob Stories

When some time has passed, scammers start their real game. They come up with sob stories, unfortunate events, and tales of loss. With these stories, fraudsters start blackmailing the victim to evoke sympathy and pity for them. These stories express hardships, misfortunes, pain, loneliness, and struggles. The aim behind these stories is to deceive and with the sympathy of their target. This storytelling aims to gain financial help from the victim.

Ask for a Financial Favor

Fraudsters use convincing language to win the trust of their target, and once they succeed, they ask for favors. They will ask for financial help to sort out an urgent matter, or hospital bill, or book a return flight from a place where they are stuck for some reason. They will ask for financial favors through gift cards, cryptocurrency, or QR card scans located in a foreign land.

Inconsistent or Contradictory Details

The stories scammers use to narrate their unfortunate past won’t match their backgrounds or job details. There will be inconsistencies and contradictory details in everything they speak about and do. Remember, not all people tell lies about their lives, but fraudsters make up fake stories to get sympathy. So, you have to be careful while talking to a stranger on matchmaking apps.

Theft and Financial Gain

The purpose of online dating scams is more or less stealing money from innocent people. This fake online dating goes on as long as you give them what they ask for. They will siphon as much money as possible, and once you stop cooperating with them, you will get no response. This is a common pattern that online romance scams follow. If you identify these signs in your online interactions with someone, do not conform at once. Never comply with their demand for financial favors or any other help that costs you money.

How To Avoid Online Dating Scams?

If you are looking for your special one on online dating apps, then you must use safe browsing practices to stay secure and avoid scams. Here are some of the most important points that provide the best tips to avoid online dating scams.

Don`t Accept Unknown Friend Requests

Fraudsters create fake social media accounts to approach their target. They use too-good-to-be-real profiles on popular social media apps to start friendships with a person. After that, they follow a preplanned and measured strategy to trap their target. So, the best thing you should do in this situation is to reject their friendship proposal. Just don’t accept their friend request; add them to your friend list.

Don't Share Personal Information

Scammers ask you about your personal life to collect information about you. They can ask your full name, house address, job details, workplace, and daily routines, Etc. They use this data to exploit you, access your accounts, create fake accounts in your name, and manipulate you by invoking shared interests. It is highly recommended that you avoid sharing personal information with strangers as much as possible. It helps you keep your privacy intact and protect your online security. Nobody would be able to approach you and exploit you in any way.

Use Certified Online Dating Apps

There are hundreds of online matchmaking apps and sites available on the internet. But only a few of them are reliable and secure. Do not choose any random app to find a perfect match. Scammers create bogus apps to lure people and entrap them in honey traps. You must use certified online dating apps to find your perfect match. Reputed and authentic relationship platforms offer robust security measures to detect and prevent scamming. Certified platforms offer a firewall against romance scams, providing complete privacy and safety protocols.

Move Slowly Take Your Time

When you are finding love through relationship apps, make sure you move slowly and take your time. Scammers rush to start deep relationships and win your trust quickly. You have to be patient in this situation and keep up your defenses. Do not share personal information all at once with a stranger you are virtually interacting with. Instead of this, you must ask detailed questions, know their stories, and find consistency in the answers. If you find anything suspicious, then stop talking to them. Ending a conversation with them will save you from receiving more information or being influenced by them.

Keep Your Eyes Open

If you are the one taking the initiative to approach someone on the relationship site, then don’t think it is a safe step. Romance scammers can be anywhere, and they wait for people to come to them and fall into their honeytrap. They set traps, creating fake accounts and dating profiles using fake names, photos, videos, addresses, Etc. Therefore, you are highly recommended to keep your eyes open, watch your steps, and play it safe. Choose the safer or more cautious option available to avoid risks.

Cross-Check And Verify

You should cross-check the details about your potential date on the Internet before taking any further steps. Visit various social media platforms and search for the person’s name, profile picture, email address, and contact information. Check their friend list, profile information, education, and professional details. Find out who followers are, who likes and comments on the photos and stories. It will help you authenticate the real identity of the person you are interacting with online. With this, you will be able to proceed with caution and be careful with your actions.

Don`t Share Explicit Pictures

Never share any sensitive or private pictures, videos, or any other form of content with strangers. It will lower your defences and provide the chance for the criminal to blackmail you and extort money from you. The scammer will threaten you to release or upload the material on the internet and share it with your near and dear ones. Hence, refrain from giving any leverage or advantage to your enemy to capitalize on.

Avoid Suspicious Links

Sweet swindlers attach phishing links in their bios, messages, and conversations. These links can take you to malicious sites or download deadly malware on your system. Once your device gets virus-infected, cybercriminals can leverage it to access your device, steal sensitive details, and commit financial fraud against you. Therefore, avoiding suspicious links on dating sites is highly recommended. Before clicking the links, make sure to verify their legitimacy and the destination that they lead to.

Try to Fix a Public Meeting

A real person will always want to meet you to confirm your real identity, build healthy relationships, and understand each other. You should fix a public meeting with your potential date to develop a mutual understanding and learn more about the person. At the same time, if you do so, choose a familiar and convenient place close to your home. Also, share the information with your family members or friends so that some will always know about your actions. If any mishap occurs, there will be someone for you to call for help and protection from danger.

Never Make Financial Favors

The primary purpose of sweet swindlers on online dating apps is to extract money from innocent people. They will ask you for financial assistance, gift cards, to pay the bills, or to cover them until they get their salary from their office. These are common strategies romance scammers use to thug people. You have to avoid doing financial favors to the stranger you are in contact with over any social media site or relationship app. People with good intentions and pure love will never ask you for financial favors, especially when your relationship is new. Scammers are there only to extort money from you.

How to Respond to An Online Dating Scam?

If you, by chance, become a victim of an online dating scam, then here are some effective steps you should take to minimize its negative effects. They are as follows:

Stop all Communications

As soon as you find out that you are talking to a fake person, cut off all communications. To do so, you should use the blocking features of the dating site you are using to talk to the scammer. If you share any personal contact details, do not respond to messages and calls from the enemy. Block them immediately so that they cannot reach you using any gateways.

Report the Incident

Report the profile of the scammer as a fraud or scam using the very site you met them on. Your response will help the platform block the profile from its database and stop it from ensnaring other persons using the same user account. You can report the incident to the law enforcement authorities in case you lose any money or valuable items during your communications.

Protect Your Personal Information

Change your passwords to protect your important accounts from scammers, and monitor your financial accounts for unauthorized transactions and payments. If you have exchanged any important information with the fraudster, then safeguard it using the best options available to you. Protecting personal information is highly necessary to minimize the damage and protect your hard-earned money and public reputation.

Seek Support

Connect to online forums, legal organizations, and cybercrime investigation agencies to report the events and seek support. You should share your experience with near and dear ones to get help and guidance to avoid further damage. With this, you may be able to recover the loss inflicted on you by the criminals.

Consider Recovering Financial Losses

You should contact your bank, credit card agency, and the concerned financial institutions to recover the financial losses and sort out the unauthorized payments. Provide the details of the incident and account details to which you transferred money or paid any amount. The financial institution can help you reverse the amount in your account or find a real person.

Educate Yourself and Stay Alert

It is highly important that you stay informed about the latest scams and frauds happening on the internet. You should educate yourself and avoid using unsafe sites to find your true love. You have to stay alert even when you are using a certified relationship app, as scammers are everywhere, and they will use different channels to contact you and befriend you. Don’t optimize your dating account completely, as criminals can steal all the important information from it and use it to exploit you.

How to Safely Use Online Dating Apps?

Online dating apps and sites can be a good way to find your true love, your special one that really matches your vibes. But you must use it securely and take some precautions to find love on relationship sites and enjoy good times safely.

Here are some tips that help you find good connections securely:

Use trusted and authentic dating platforms with positive user experiences and reviews.
Read the privacy policy of the site and make sure it protects your personal data.
Don't share all the details on your dating profile, e.g., full name, address, contact no, etc.
Use a dating app to communicate and chat, and don't move too fast to personal contact.
Upload unique and current photos on your dating account to avoid any danger.
Watch out for unclear, too good-to-be-true, and inconsistent profiles.
Develop a deep understanding before fixing a date in person.
Choose safe locations near your residence to hold your first public meetings.
Keep your friend and a family member informed about seeing someone.
Follow your instincts if you are feeling like you are not ready for any real-life meeting.
If you feel uncomfortable or uneasy, then cut off the conversation and part your ways.
Don't send any money, gifts, or any financial favors via cryptocurrency or gift cards to the stranger you are chatting with.
Use a secure connection to browse dating apps, and avoid public WiFi connections.
Enable multi-factor authentication services to protect and authenticate your accounts.
Do move to the personal chat or WhatsApp messaging immediately.
If you see any suspicious activity, report it and block the person immediately.

Guard Your PC with Premium Antivirus

Keep your computer secure, smooth, and free of virus infections. Download 360 Antivirus Pro free.

How to Detect and Avoid Online Dating Scams?

Alarming Figures About Dating App Scams