Living in the most time-consuming age affects our everyday life. As much as it impacts our daily life, it made its way into influencing our romantic lives. We don’t seem to have time for romance and we don’t seem to have any time for dating. Actually, we don’t really have time for developing relationships. We have to carve out some time to ask someone out for a date.
And then internet arrived as some kind of salvation, as it gave us online dating. Online dating gave the possibility to search for you match in every corner of the world. And what’s the best about online dating, is the fact that you get to know each other mentally, without basing your choice on appearance.
Unfortunately, whenever there is something good, there must be something bad, otherwise it seems too good to be true. Thus, online dating scams arrived. As online dating sites are paid, it means that someone will use it just to steal your money. Still, online dating scams are not limited strictly to dating sites.
Internet is full of scam stories where someone would land about $1,500 to his or her online partner and never saw the money, and the partner as well. There are more serious fraud scams stories, like victim allowing the online partner to use his or her personal bank account, and then got into trouble with the FBI. You can actually dig them on the web, there are a lot of scam victims. In order to not post online dating scam stories, you need to learn this twelve interesting facts about online frauds.
Love Makes Us Weaponless
Scammers pretend that they are seeking love just as much as you are. Unfortunately, when we are lonely and when we are looking for love, we hit our peak of vulnerability. And we all become a little bit soft in a head, when we are vulnerable. Remember, online swindlers target those who are vulnerable, as they are the easiest to trick. When you are lonely against your will, it is way easier to gain your trust. All you need is to be told that you are loved and you are not going to stay lonely forever.
Age Rate
Scammers prey on men and women between 25 and 35 years old. Why? The answer is simple, as this age group is the most likely to search for love online. Studying is over, thus, if you weren't lucky to get a boyfriend or a girlfriend in your high-school or college years, it is highly unlikely that you would have time for that while working. So, you dive deep into the waters of online dating, drawing the attention of online scammers.
Number of Victims
It is still hard to tell the exact number of online dating scam victims. Just for you to picture the possible number, think that every fourth person in every state where internet is widespread is using or was using online dating sites in certain period of his or her life.
Number of Fake Profiles
Every second internet user came across a fake account at least once in his or her life. This is not strictly limited to online dating, as there are a lot of fake accounts on social media. If there are so many people on Facebook pretending to be someone else, just imagine the number of fake profiles on online dating sites.
More Scary Numbers
Every third internet user was asked to land some money by their penfriends. Moreover, those penfriends gave quite legitimate reasons. Either they faced financial scrutiny or their relatives got sick and needed expensive treatment.
Scam Kills Trust
A recent survey showed that over 70% of American internet users are willing to check their partners on different online media in order to feel safe. Mainly it was attributed to those who start relationships online.
Main Characters
In order to gain your sympathy and trust, scammers try to develop a trustworthy character. Mainly swindlers prefer to pretend to be soldiers or even veterans, to make you believe them. Moreover, in order to impersonate the military staff, scammers often use the photos and even names of real soldiers.
Typical Reasons to Extract Money From You
We've mentioned the most common reasons to ask a victim for money, but there are more. Quite often they point shortage of money to pay the phone bill. Of course you will agree, as it may hamper your correspondence with your perfect match. But there are even more fantastic stories, like they are held somewhere against their will and you need to pay in order to save them.
Confidence Fraud
“Confidence Fraud” is another popular name for online dating scam. You can easily figure out why. How can you be confident in anyone, if even searching for love maybe full of lies.
Online Dating vs. Social Media
While it is believed that dating scams are common only for dating services, actually they originated from emails and social media. It turns out that free sites and apps turn out to be a better stage for frauds, as people simply don't expect someone to fool them.
Fantastic Stories
The funniest point about online dating frauds, is the fact that swindlers rarely tell down to earth stories. The more fantastic the story is the better. What comes as a complete surprise is the fact that people tend to believe in stories of someone being held somewhere, or getting into some ridiculous troubles. Or believing that the con-artist's claims that he or she is living... let's say Denmark, not knowing the main street of Copenhagen.
Common Belief
It is believed that every tenth profile on online dating service is a scam. How close is this to the truth and if there is a point to go in for the online dating after everything you have learned about swindlers?
Actually, yes. The online services where every tenth profile is fake are those not reputable ones. If you stick with reputable services like romancecompass, you can easily avoid scam. It doesn't mean that there are no scammers, but on romancecompass you can block and report on anyone whom you consider to be suspicious. Moreover, romancecompass blog has a lot of useful articles on scams. Reading those articles can help you in protecting yourself while enjoying your online dating experience.