If you’re a newbie in online dating you might not know about this yet, but if you’ve been using dating apps for a while, there’s a very high chance that you’ve already encountered fake profiles on dating sites. This wouldn’t be a problem if the dating app you are using has an identity verification features. But if it doesn’t, you have to learn how to identify fake dating sites profiles yourself.
Why Identifying Fake Dating App Profiles is so Important
The main reason is criminals and scammers are using fake profiles to find and lure their victims. They will sign up on dating apps using fake names and use attractive photos that they just downloaded from the internet. The most common type of online dating scam is called the romance scam or the love scam. The scam basically works this way: scammers will find lonely dating app members and make them fall in love, then they will start asking money. According to our research, romance scam is the top reason why people lose their money online.
Tips to Spot Fake Dating App Members
1. Their Photos look too Professional
If their photos look like it was shot in a studio or it was made for a commercial, there’s a chance that the photo was stolen from professional models. Don’t immediately trust members that have celebrity like photos. Profiles that have more probability of being legit are those with photos that look like they were shot with a mobile phone camera and not from professional photography cameras.
2. They Love you Right Away
One of the common signs of a dating app member being a scammer is they profess their love for you the moment you start chatting. Scammers will say they like you and they want to meet you right away even without getting to know you first. This does not mean all members who do this are all scammers, but the majority are.
3. Poor Grammar
If they say that they are from the USA or UK but they can’t construct good sentences, you might wanna doubt if they really are who they say they are. Most online daters don’t really care about this but according to our research, 90% of online dating scammers have poor English grammar.
4. They don’t want to meet in person
If the dating app member you are chatting with doesn’t want to meet in person, he or she must be hiding something. Perhaps their name, photo, and address are all fake. Sure meeting up with strangers you just met from dating apps is very scary but as long as you follow some of our safety tips, you should be fine:
- Get to know about them first, do not rush in meeting them up.
- Use the dating app’s identity verification measures if they have one.
- On your first date, meet in public places.
- Bring a friend to your first meeting or introduce your date to your friends. It’s always a good idea for people around you to know who you are dating.
5. Ask some Questions about your Place
If they claim that they live near you, you can easily check whether they are telling the truth or not by asking questions like what the most famous restaurant around town.
6. Copy-pasted Messages
Scammers send the same spam messages to multiple dating app members at once, hoping for someone to bite the bait and respond to their message. You may get generic phrases like “Hi how are you…” or “hey handsome…” all the time which most probably came from scammers. Aside from scammers, these kinds of messages could also come from bots. Brand new dating apps that don’t have members yet use bots to make it look like they have thousands of members already. These bots automatically send messages to new members pretending to be real people.
7. They Don’t Want to Show their Face on Camera
One of the most effective ways to check whether the person you’re chatting with is using their real identity is by asking them to video chat with you. Scammers will make reasons like they have a broken camera, etc. to avoid it. Some online daters are scared about showing their face to strangers but it should be safe as long as you only show your face and not some other things, this is to avoid risks of being extorted in the future.
8. Check their Social Media Profiles
We could all agree that everyone today is on social media. If your date doesn’t have any social media accounts, there’s a chance that they’re using fake names. Even if they have one, you should still make sure that it’s a legit account. Check if the social media profile is not just made last month, check if they have complete profile information, check if they have friends, and check if they have photos with friends and family and not just selfie pictures.
Bottomline
These tips are proven effective ways to spot fake profiles from dating apps. But if you don’t like to risk it, what we can advise you is to only use authoritative and legit dating apps only. Famous dating apps like Tinder, eHarmony, Match already have identity verification methods in place to prevent people using fake identity from signing up.
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very helpful, thanks! most people including me take these things for granted