Each year, thousands of singles who are looking for love fall victim to online dating scams, leaving them with nothing but a shattered heart and an empty wallet.
While social media and online dating platforms have grown to be widely used for finding romance and friends, they have, regrettably, also become widely used by con artists known as romance scammers. In order to entice victims, develop personal relationships, and eventually demand money, these con artists build false profiles.
How To Recognize Online Scammers [ENTIRE GUIDE]
Our world has never been more interconnected, but it has also never been harder to discern if someone is defrauding you online. This page focuses on all forms of fraud, including phishing scams, email scams, online dating scams, and romantic scammer techniques (signs of a romance scammer). Let’s begin.
It might be challenging to tell if someone is trying to con you when you are shopping, researching, dating, or simply socialising online. It’s likely that you have already been a target if you recently engaged in any of these actions online.
Fortunately, there are strategies you may employ to safeguard yourself, increase your awareness, and identify fraudsters in practically any circumstance. To find out more about warning signs of illegal activity, continue reading.
Making Promising and Ensured Statements: Typical Fraud and Online Dating Scams
Unless you’re talking about the possibility that a con artist may target you, there are no sure bets in this world. Red signs that you might be being conned should appear when someone offers you sure bets, guarantees, and promises of large returns, money, or easy love. Particularly today, there are many romantic scams.
Scammers target people with offers and opportunities that seem too good to be true via email, social media, or dating websites using bot accounts and automated programs. Make sure to give an offer like this some serious thought before accepting it.
More information about spotting internet scams can be found here.
You Receive a Message from a Private Account
When you are approached via a private account, online platforms like email, or even phone messaging, use extra caution. We are always a little hesitant when communicating through online social media or dating services, but we feel a little more comfortable when someone contacts us via email or phone.
For this reason, it should trigger some red lights if a stranger or someone who has a peculiar message reaches you via these techniques. Then, contact you and the people on your contact list using your private accounts. Be very careful to safeguard your phone number and email address.
Wire transfers, Cash App, and money orders are indicators of other criminals and romance scammers.
Which behaviours indicate a romance scammer? Only transactions involving close family and friends should be made by wire transfer. While this form of transfer is quick and simple (and typically does not require any additional fees or steps), it is also simple to operate a scam by creating a false identity.
A wire transfer is not necessarily the first step in fraud. Typically, the con artist will use a bogus check or money order to pay for a transaction. The con artist will draught the money order or check for a larger sum than was required, as if by accident.
The victim will lose their wired funds before they become aware of the scam because it will take some time to verify the check or money order.
The request for money made through a venue should raise additional caution flags. Scams involving CashApp, Bitcoin, Venmo, Steam cards, and Amazon are all very common. These are essentially websites or apps that offer ways to send money using exclusive methods or gift cards. Anyone requesting money in this manner should be avoided.
Taking the Place of Authority Figures
Let’s uncover some tactics used by romance scammers. Most people enjoy obeying commands from superiors as long as they are legal and beneficial. Because of this, con artists will pretend to be in charge in an effort to manipulate their victims. This involves posing as police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, or other well-known authorities.
This also applies to other situations. People who pretend to be IRS agents, bank employees, or other authority figures may get in touch with you via phone or email and pressure you into providing financial information.
Threats, extortion, and ransom are examples of intimidation and fear
Scammers enjoy playing on people’s fears or anxieties in order to elicit the desired response. Threats of danger to friends, family, or the police are common components in con games.
A common scam involves gathering information about the identity of a victim’s family member, using it to give the impression that the family member is in danger, and then pressuring the victim to comply with their demands. Before requesting assistance from the authorities in the event that someone threatens you with ransom, kidnapping, blackmail, or police action, make sure the threat is credible. Never try to handle things on your own. The strategies used by romance scammers are very well thought out.
Fictitious profiles
Scammers will utilise phoney profiles to find their victims whether they are contacted by email, Facebook, or a dating website. This could entail trying to access your contacts or friends list by utilising random images of strangers.
It might also entail “spoofing” or impersonating a relative or acquaintance in order to give the impression that the target is being contacted by someone they can trust. It’s important to understand how to spot internet scams.
Other romance scammer strategies include victimisation.
Scammers will also take advantage of people’s want to assist those in need, in a manner similar to how they prey on people’s desire to obey authority officials. Scammers are aware that you will be more willing to assist them if they present themselves as victims of crime, tragedy, or some kind of loss. Try to communicate with anyone who contacts you online seeking assistance through reliable ways. Online, there are many ways to assist those in need, but they typically don’t entail making direct, unwelcome requests.
Avoid falling for the heart-tugging tricks used by romance scammers. For instance, partners stranded in remote locations like oil rigs or military bases, or financial partners stranded in foreign nations who require money to bail them out. In the end, it’s simple to be exploited because of excitement or emotions, despite the fact that we may believe we won’t believe these absurd tales.
You should proceed with extreme caution if someone asks you for help with bills, surgery, gambling debts, customs fees, or travel documents.
Email Communication Red Flags
In order to aid in catching thieves before they have a chance to complete their task, please pay special attention to the information provided in your email headers. Copying or forging an authentic email from the Federal Government or a company like Microsoft might be challenging. This exposes a flaw in scammers’ strategies.
Pay close attention to the “domain” at the end of the email address. Scammers will attempt to avoid being detected by using names of well-known companies, like Microsoft. Verify that an email claiming to be from “@microsoft.com” isn’t really coming from “@micorsoft.com” (notice the purposeful letter transposition), or from someone using an alternative domain like “@microsoft.co.”
Similar to this, some businesses won’t ever email you about specific matters. In order to collect money, the IRS, for instance, never calls anyone. Be wary if you receive a fake email from PayPal, Craigslist, or an Amazon login request asking you to send money to them directly because other businesses have comparable policies.
How to Respond If You Feel Scammed
There are a few steps you may take to protect yourself if you believe you may be a victim of a scam, regardless of whether the scammer is after financial, social, or emotional gain:
- Speak with someone. Consult with friends, family, or a trustworthy person about your problem. Our viewpoint can get distorted when we become very enthused about the possibility of achieving financial or romantic success. It can be beneficial to bounce your predicament off of someone who has a more laid-back perspective.
- Shut down communication. Stopped all communication with the prospective criminal right away, whether it is by email, social media, or phone.
- Look for them. Try using a reverse image search online if you have a fictitious image of a con artist. Finding more copies or places of the same image can be done with the aid of Google or another robust search engine. It should raise serious red lights if it doesn’t line up with the facts you already know. Using the data they have previously given you, you can also conduct basic online searches or even pay for a service to run a background check on a prospective fraudster.
- Make research. If someone approaches you and requests funding for a cause, look into the cause. The channel they plan to use to exchange money or information should be thoroughly investigated. Try conducting a quick Google search or other form of research if someone has a touching or fascinating tale to share about their work or relationships. Because scammers must test their methods on a large number of people before they are successful, you can find evidence of their earlier attempts online.
Here is a list of scam sites as well as advice on how to identify warning signs on shady websites.
Strategies for Reporting Scammers
Tell your friends how to spot internet scams so they can protect themselves. Share this information on social media and notify authorities of any suspicious activities or scams. How? Using the URL below, you can do it through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC):
Report To The FTC Here
How to better protect yourself
Please sign up for the Scam Detector email if you want to learn about the most common scams each week. Weekly emails will be sent to you; we swear not to spam.
Last but not least, become knowledgeable about online safety by reading some of the other articles about fraud that are listed below this paragraph. You may uncover further con artists in the Comments section below.
