How to Identify and Avoid Online Dating Scammers

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Key signs and red flags to look for when using dating apps

Co-authored by Maya Diamond, MA and Jack Lloyd

Last Updated: May 24, 2024 Tested

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Recognizing Scammers

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Preventing Scams

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Help Spotting Scams

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Expert Q&A

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Tips

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Warnings

This wikiHow teaches you how to avoid being scammed on dating sites. Online dating scammers tend to target people who have a large amount of information in their profiles, and the scam is usually based around stealing money, credit card information, or personal information from the victim.

Things You Should Know

Be wary of users that ask for your personal information, like your location, work place, or email address.
Review the person's profile for red flags like stock photos, overly high income, or age gaps in their preferred partner. If they seem too good to be true, they probably are.
Ask them to have a video call, or to meet you in person. Scammers are most often unable or reluctant to show you their faces.

Part 1

Part 1 of 2:

Recognizing Scammers

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Scammers typically try to find people who seem vulnerable (e.g., widowers or single, older people). Once a scammer makes a connection with a victim, they will request money for an emergency (e.g., a hospital bill) or a circumstantial event (e.g., a plane ticket to come see you).

Tip: You can avoid the bulk of online dating scams by establishing a hard rule about not sending money to anyone you haven't met in person.
While middle-aged widowers have traditionally been targets for online fraud, no online dating user is exempt from being targeted by scams on an international scale.

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Look for typical scammer behavior. While no two scammers are identical, nearly all dating scammers will exhibit several of the following behaviors:^{[1]
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- Insistence on taking the conversation off of the dating service (e.g., asking to text or email)
- Repeatedly asking for odd personal information (e.g., your location)
- Disconcertingly dramatic, erratic, or otherwise strange behavior (in all likelihood, you'll want to avoid dating people like this anyway)
- Early or inappropriate professions of love
- Reader Poll: We asked 413 wikiHow readers who've dealt with scammers like fake sugar mommas, and 64% of them agreed that the best way to tell they’re fake is if they constantly ask for financial support. [Take Poll] Don’t send money to someone you don’t know!
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Review the person's profile. Common scammer profiles are modeled differently depending on whether they are male or female, but you'll usually see several of the following attributes if the person is a scammer:^{[2]
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- High income
- Average height
- Attractive
- No political persuasion
- Engineer (male) or student (female)
- Mid-40s (male) or low 30s (female)
Online dating scammers usually target people older than themselves.^{[3]
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Check their photo for duplicates. Save a copy of their profile photo, then upload it to Google to search for other instances of it. If you see several other sites with the photo pop up in the results, then you know that—at the very least—they're not using their own photo.
- If you do determine that they're not using their own photo, consider calling them out. This may reveal more suspicious behavior.
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Look closely at their side of the conversation. When communicating, scammers' messages will be full of inconsistencies, often getting their own name or your name wrong. These messages may be badly written or repeat themselves. Watch for these other signs:
- Their command of language deteriorates with time. They may even start out having no clue about grammar or punctuation.
- They make mistakes in that their "story" begins to contradict itself.
  - Alternatively, they never provide any personal details about themselves.
- They mix pronouns (he/she, him/her).
- They mention things that seem entirely unrelated to the profile they've built up of themselves, or that seem too revealing and even unbelievable.
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Ask them to meet up. Scammers will never meet you in person, and they will usually express reluctance to do so when asked.
- If the person with whom you're talking either outright refuses to meet you or bails on your plans multiple times in a row, they're most likely a scammer.
- Alternatively, the person may ask you to pay for their ticket or means of transportation.
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Ask to contact the person via video or voice chat. If the person isn't willing to meet up, consider asking if you can contact them at their number (never your own) or via a voice- or video-chat app such as Skype. If they agree to this, pay attention to their tone and use of language; if their demeanor seems to contradict what you know about them, it's best to walk away.
- Again, if the person outright refuses to talk to you over an audio or video connection, they're most likely a scammer.
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Watch out for the catch. When scammers think they have you on their hook, they attempt to reel you in. This is usually when they will "agree" to meet up or talk to you, but their plans to do so will usually be interrupted by a financial emergency.
- As a general rule, if the person to whom you're talking asks for money in any context, they're a scammer.
- Don't fall for phrases like "For this to work, we both have to trust each other" or "I thought you loved me"; this is a form of emotional manipulation.

Part 2

Part 2 of 2:

Preventing Scams

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1
Keep your profile as private as possible. One of the first steps in making your profile scammer-proof is limiting the amount of information they can see. If possible, restrict your country/state/region, phone number, email address, job, and any other personal information from your public profile.
- Most services require you to display your age, a description, and a picture. Outside of those items, you should keep the rest of your profile blank.
- Scammers require quite a bit of information about you before they can attempt to reel you in, so limiting their leverage from the start decreases your odds of being targeted.
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Don't give potential scammers leverage over you. A common scam involves the scammer saving any risque photos, videos, and/or messages sent to them, uploading them to a public website, and using the uploaded content to blackmail the sender into paying them. As such, avoid sending messages that reveal who you are, at least at first.
- This doesn't mean that you can't interact with the person as you please; just remember that anything you send to a stranger online can be used against you.
- Avoid sending photos or videos that show friends or family, or that give away your location.
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Keep your discussions on the dating site. If you're using a dating site that has a built-in chat option (as most do), your safest bet is to keep your conversations with the other person limited to the dating site's chat. If the other person suggests moving to email or texting, decline.
- This will usually allow your selected dating site to review the contents of your messages if you decide to report the other person as a scammer.
- Keeping discussions within the dating service will also allow you to block the person later (if needed) without having to block them in your email or on your phone as well.
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Avoid giving out your real phone number. If you must move the conversation over to your smartphone, don't tell the other person your number. This doesn't mean that you have to give someone a fake number; there are plenty of free mobile instant messaging services—WhatsApp, Skype, Google Voice, and Facebook Messenger are only a few examples—that can be used to message someone freely without having to compromise your real phone number.
- If the person to whom you're talking refuses to use any mode of conversation except your phone number, there's a decent chance that they're more interested in the number than in the conversation.
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Document your interactions with the person. If you suspect that the person with whom you're conversing is attempting to scam you, there are a few things that you can do to ensure that you have evidence against them:
- Refrain from deleting conversations or other forms of communication.
- Take screenshots of the conversations.
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Stop talking to the person if need be. There's nothing wrong with cutting off contact with someone, especially if you think that they might be a scammer. If you have a bad feeling after interacting with a person online, you don't owe them your time.
- Many dating sites will allow you to block the person to whom you're talking. As long as they don't have your email address or phone number, doing this will prevent them from being able to contact you at all.
- If the person becomes unreasonably outraged or sends threats your way, be sure to take screenshots and report the person's profile to the dating service.
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Report scams to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. If you do get scammed, you should file a complaint on the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center site at https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx by clicking File a Complaint and filling out the form.
- Naturally, you should also report the scammer to the site on which you were scammed.

Help Spotting Scams

Online Dating Scam Giveaways

Scam Online Dating Conversation

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Question

Who do romance scammers target?

Maya Diamond, MA
Relationship Coach
Maya Diamond is a Dating and Relationship Coach in Berkeley, CA. She has 15 years of experience helping singles stuck in frustrating dating patterns find internal security, heal their past, and create healthy, loving, and lasting partnerships. She received her Master's in Somatic Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2009.

Maya Diamond, MA

Relationship Coach

Expert Answer

Scammers can target anyone. If you haven't met someone in person and they're saying, "I love you," there's a good chance they're a scammer, especially if they haven't made an effort to meet you. Another huge clue is when they say that they're working in another country, but that they need money to come to your country to visit you. Unfortunately, that's a common scam that affects a lot of people, even people who are very smart, intelligent, and successful.

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Question

What should I do if a man asks for my full name and address so he can send me gifts from overseas?

Community Answer

Don't do it. That is too much information for someone you don't know.

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How can I know if people are scammers online?

Community Answer

Pay careful attention to whether there are any inconsistencies in their stories. Also, beware of anyone who addresses you with "Dear..." Most scammers do this.

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Tips

Unfortunately, encountering online scammers is a very real possibility. Romance scams are the leading cause of lost money due to scams, and somewhere around 12 percent of people who use online dating have reported running into a scammer.^{[4]
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During your first contact with a scammer, they will usually ask what you do for a living. Refraining from answering this question (or saying something snarky like "I work") will often dissuade them from pursuing your profile.

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Searching for a person on job sites like LinkedIn may help you find the person (or people) on which a scammer is basing their profile.

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Tips from our Readers

The advice in this section is based on the lived experiences of wikiHow readers like you. If you have a helpful tip you’d like to share on wikiHow, please submit it in the field below.

Read the messages they send. The exact same messages are often used by different profiles, usually all engineers living in different countries and working in cities or rigs in your country but far from you.
Ask them for a photo of them holding a piece of paper with your name on it. They use old photos from victims and if they can't show a recent photo, they are a scammer.
They call you dear or ask if they can call you babe because then they don't have to remember your name.

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Warnings

Remember the Golden Rule of online interaction: if it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.

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Never give out your dating service account password. Even employees of the dating service will not ask for your password.

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Do not accept packages or payments from potential scammers, as doing so may involve you in money laundering.^{[5]
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