Don’t fall blindly in love, outsmart the scammers by knowing their tricks.
We’ve talked a lot about how you can find love on dating platforms, from learning how their algorithms work to finding unique technological solutions to matchmaking. At this point, most of our readers know almost everything about finding a partner. But you might not know that, just like every other aspect of the internet, online dating is also plagued with scams.
According to a report from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as of 2021, online dating platform users have lost US$547 million to dating scams. The only way to avoid falling prey to these scams is knowing what they are. And so, here’s a list of some of the most common scams that you might encounter in your quest for love.
Catfishing
Catfishing is a scam that you might already be familiar with. It is a situation where a person pretends to be someone else, often an extremely attractive person, to get matches on a dating platform. Some of the tell-tale signs that the person you matched with is a catfish are—
- Their pictures look good enough to be in a magazine.
- They are avoiding video chatting or meeting in person.
- They have very few friends/followers on social media and/or a recently created profile.
If you suspect someone of being a catfish, you should conduct a reverse image search on the images they have shared on their dating profile to check whether they are actually using their own pictures…
