Online Dating Scams on the Rise…
Lisa Scott in the Metro writes this morning on the “Cost of CyberLove” about how online dating scams are on the rise and may already be costing Britain over £3.5billion per year, according to the Office of Fair Trading.
“After months of chatting online to potential suitors, Jessica finally met someone she could see a future with. Tall, dark and intelligent, 44-year-old Mark promised he would fly to London where they would start a new life together – he just had to finish building an orphanage in West Africa first. On top of his very attractive credentials, Mark, originally from Ohio in America, was clearly a good Samaritan. So when he told Jessica about a sick child who needed £1,500 for urgent medical treatment, she wired it over immediately. Then he contacted me again and said the child was going to die unless they got another £1,500. I didn’t want her death on my conscience so I sent the rest over,’ she explains. They continued an intense affair, which involved online conversations – sometimes lasting up to six hours – plus phone calls and regular text messages. But three months after Jessica sent the second instalment, she realised the person she had spoken to candidly about love and sex was actually a gang of Nigerian men who were after her cash”
Interestingly the article quotes Barb Sluppick, Head of the Support Group RomanceScams.org, who discusses the different levels with which these gangs typically work. It’s interesting to note that The 3G Dating Agency has been specifically designed to ensure members avoid EACH and EVERY one of these…
1. The most basic involves sending out thousands of winks, hugs and e-mails…
This is the scattergun approach… put out enough bait and you’re bound to get some vulnerable victims. Unfortunately most mainstream online dating sites are actually designed to enable this because they provide members with the ability to send unlimited free messages. The 3G Dating Agency is different, because you don’t pay a subscription and only pay 50p when you want to send a message it doesn’t put off anyone who really likes your profile and wants to introduce themself BUT it does deter those who want to send a message to everyone on the site. The moderator of our chat engine would also ensure that we quickly pick up on any scammer who was foolish enough to pay to send everyone a scam message and we would promptly take him into a conversation with a fake profile that we’d set up to find out the particular details of their scam. We would then block this approach in future AND report the activity to the police.
2. Most scammers aren’t geniuses. Here are some clues that they may not be genuine: They claim to have blonde hair and blues eyes when the picture is dark hair and brown eyes or vice versa.
Can’t do that with a live one-to-one 3G Video Call…
3. Scammers want to avoid the site moderators (if they exist) and so immediately want to get off the online dating website and on to instant messaging
No way to avoid our moderators I’m afraid… we moderate every single message and because it’s easier to use our Mobile site than a separate instant messaging application there is no reason for members to provide one another with their real contact details UNTIL they have met and come to learn that the other member is deserving of their trust.
4. If you ask them a question they don’t know, they will be offline for a while when they go off to look up the answer and then claim they had a phone call or had to go to the bathroom
Not very easy to do that with a live one-to-one 3G Video Call…
5. They claim it was destiny or fate and you are meant to be together or God brought you to him/her.
The only thing bringing people together at The 3G Dating Agency is a simple to use mobile website and our unique personal rating/discovery system that ensures members preferentially see the validated profiles of individuals who have already rated their profile…
6. Many of them claim to have lost a spouse/child/parent in a horrific car or aeroplane accident.
Our moderators are on the look out for chat like this and will intervene if we hear different tall tales being dished out by individuals we suspect of scamming…
7. Standard clues that indicate you are dealing with a scammer include the use of ‘i’ not ‘I’ and poor spelling, for example they may misspell the cities or towns they claim they are from and are unfamiliar with any of the local landmarks and attractions.
Lots of people use the spelling i instead of I and with many people affected by dyslexia this is a pretty silly way to exclude potential partners, I mean you wouldn’t really pass up a date with Richard Branson or Tom Cruise would you! As well as that in 2009 it’s a bit naive to think that a spell checker is beyond the reach of most online criminal gangs!
8. They may request you to show yourself on a webcam… and then they record this video and use it to try to blackmail you by threatening to send copies to family members or your colleaugues at work if you try to end the affair without paying them off…
Key to prevention of this is the comprehensive safety advice on our website and the fact that our moderators are expert at looking for this type of activity. The anonymity of the usernames we use to identify members also means it’s very difficult for the scammers to be able to locate your workplace or family (something that is easy to do if you exchange email using your work email address or mention where you live – which are somewhat normal activities within many online dating communities).
9. In nearly every case, the scammer is a man who takes on both male and female personas. ‘They will just ask their wife or sister to talk on the phone if required,’ says Sluppick…
Can’t do that with a live one-to-one 3G Video Call…
10. ‘When a man realises he has been talking to a West African man, not a beautiful woman, it is devastating.’
Can’t do that with a live one-to-one 3G Video Call…
11. “Barb Sluppick says the responsibility falls on many shoulders. ‘Amongst others, Western Union and Money Gram think they are protected by asking the simple question, “Do you know the person you are sending money to?” and the dating sites who feign ignorance to this epidemic problem, feeling they are covered by a blurb that says don’t send money to someone you don’t know.’?
The 3G Dating Agency screens every validated member and all messages between members. This prevents ALL attempts of scammers to pretend they’re living in a completely different country AND prevents all requests for money transfers because they are not a part of normal dating conversations.
The fact is the best way to prevent is to deter, and because it’s easier to scam on the various non visual sites that are either completely free or offer subscriptions enabling you to spam the entire community (for no extra cost), you’ll be safer at The 3G Dating Agency because most scammers will just try it with the easier targets… love might be blind but the design of The 3G Dating Agency makes sure we’re hitting at the heart of those out to scam you!
September 16, 2009 at 2:21 am
It just amazes me as to the numbers of members that get scammed via online dating sites. Most members should clue into they are getting scammed by another member especially when they start to ask for money from another member.
The worst online scammers that I have heard of though are Russian woman scammers who are professionals when it comes to scamming money from men who they meet online with. It has been proven that some of these Russian woman scammers have had over a 100 different personal profiles over the years on different online dating sites with different email addresses for each personal profile they have created.
Any member that ever is asked for money by another member via an online dating site should cease contact with them and immediately report them to the online dating site in question. If it is possible for the online dating site to find these members and have them charged is the best thing that can happen if it is possible to do.
September 25, 2009 at 2:30 pm
There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.
September 29, 2009 at 4:23 pm
I think you’ve covered most of them and listed a few I hadn’t heard of as well. As online dating continues to grow the attempted scams will grow in proportion, so the onus is on the site administrators to be more vigilant but also online daters need to keep their wits about them.