Online Dating Scams – How To Avoid Internet Dating Scams

As the owner of a matchmaking service I can tell you people want to meet other people of the opposite sex online. But they often have to deal with online dating scams. These scams are done by thieves who take advantage of people’s desires to find a life partner. You should protect yourself against them.

Check out the following red flags of possible online dating scams:

#1: The person responds too quickly.

It’s very unlikely that the other person can always respond all the time fairly quickly. Synchronicity has its limits.

#2: She comes with a story that doesn’t make logical sense.

Everything the other possible lover does should be filtered through logic. Analyze everything and ask questions.

#3: Contact multiple profiles on the same website from different profiles.

Check if they behave similarly if you contact them from two different profiles. If they do, there may be one single person who controls entirely different profiles.

#4: Check out their time zone and compare it with the times when they have contacted you.

Will a person from Russia always reply during the night from their own country? It’s quite unlikely.

#5: Pay attention to their email writing style.

Does their email writing style change from email to email? If yes then it means that the emails that are coming from one profile may be written by multiple people.

#6: Do they ask you for money upfront?

Make sure you don’t give any money neither to the website nor to the other person.

#7: Do not open their attachments.

Attachments can contain viruses and trojans that can steal your credit card information. Instead ask links of their photos from official websites like Google Picasa and others.

#8: Talk to them on the phone.

It’s much harder for spammers to hide their true intentions behind their voice than behind a profile page.

#9: Contact the authorities before it’s too late.

Contact the authorities as soon as you think that there might be a problem. Do not wait until it’s too late.

#10: Copy and paste their email content into Google’s search box.

They might have use the same emails with other people as well. Real people don’t do this. Scammers always do it so they can contact many people at once.

#11: Use the tineye.com service to check where their profile image appeared first.

This little service will show you if a certain profile image appeared elsewhere before. Scammers usually take Facebook pictures and use them directly on their profile pages.

Keep in mind the above tips and you will easily be able to avoid any online dating scams. In the meantime, you can meet real people in the real world and continue to use online dating as a secondary strategy. Good luck and have fun!