online & offline romance scams

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online dating has changed finding relationships with partners. But the very nature of being human means that online scams have been around since day one. Having been involved in the online dating industry, I find that many sites use a lot of things just to push up their revenue & members. However the reality is that before online dating, there were also many offline romance scams. It’s always important whether you are online or offline dating to check out a person’s actions not their talk. This is key to discovering how authentic they are & then & only then can you size up whether they are a possible good match for you.

I read a great Wall Street Journal article during the week about online dating scams Online, Is Dream Date a Scam? & some of the interesting points:

How can smart people get fooled so easily? Psychologists blame what they call the “halo effect.” It’s what happens when we notice something we like about a person—often it’s physical beauty—and then start imagining other positive qualities. It’s the reason good-looking people often are paid more than average-looking people, and it happens all the time in online dating. We see an attractive person, or read an interesting profile, and soon we are projecting onto that person who we are looking for, letting our guard down, ignoring red flags. Online scammers love the halo effect.The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it gets thousands of complaints a year from people who have been fleeced by people they met on dating sites. The online dating industry says scammers represent a small fraction of all profiles. “But scammers are aggressive,” says Mark Brooks, an industry consultant who has worked with Cupid and PlentyofFish.A lawsuit filed in December seeking class-action status in U.S. District Court in Dallas alleges that more than half the profiles on Match.com are “inactive, fake or fraudulent.” Responding to questions about the lawsuit, Match.com president Mandy Ginsberg said the site has 1.9 million paid subscribers, fraud happens to very few of them and a full-time fraud-prevention team works to identify and block fake profiles.At the FBI, one Cyber Division section chief, Tim Gallagher, says most scammers operate from abroad, especially West Africa and the former Soviet republics. In a typical scenario, the scammer creates a fake profile using photos of an attractive individual, in many cases lifted off social-networking sites. Often, the written part of the profile is copied verbatim from a real profile or a recycled template. Almost always, it is designed to tug at the heartstrings, the FBI says.

Scammers want to make an emotional connection. At first, they flatter and fawn. Once you are hooked, they hit you with some variation of several well-worn sob stories, Mr. Gallagher says. Sometimes they say they live abroad and desperately want to visit you, but their country’s banking system is broken. Or they’re at the airport and their credit card has been declined. Some scammers even pretend to be U.S. military service members trying to get back home and low on cash. Their stories all end in same place: Please wire money, and they will pay you back.”They present themselves as being vulnerable, but they are really looking for someone who is more vulnerable,” Mr. Gallagher says.Online-dating sites use three lines of defense against scammers. There’s technology: Typically, an automated system will track how many messages a profile sends per hour, or searches for words like “wire.” A security team may scan suspicious profiles. Most reputable sites encourage users to flag inappropriate behavior, including money requests.Now, some online-dating sites are adding more exclusivity and security. At IvyDate.com and DateHarvardsq.com, which launched in the past year, a membership committee reviews every profile and photo submitted to check for grammar, spelling and other inconsistencies suggesting the works of an overseas scammer unfamiliar with English. “You have to create the right environment,” says Beri Meric, co-founder of the sites. “Just like in the off-line world, people are looking to go to the right neighborhood to meet the right people.”Global Personals, the British owner of U.S. sites including Texasdating.com and Theseniordatingagency.com, says it has a person—not a computer—check every photo, profile and message. The company says it gets 8,000 new members a day of which about a dozen are scammers whose profiles it pulls down immediately. On Iloveyouraccent.com, members can opt to pay for a background check of anyone on the site.

Match.com, on its website, identifies some other common red flags: Proceed with caution with anyone who claims to be recently widowed or an American working overseas, or who quickly asks to communicate on an outside email or messaging system. In April, after it was named in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by a woman alleging she was sexually assaulted by a man she met through the site, Match.com said it will start checking existing and new members against a national sex offenders registry—a measure it says it has been evaluating for years. “While these checks may help in certain instances, they remain highly flawed, and it is critical that this effort does not provide a false sense of security to our members,” the company said in a statement.And of course, screening for sex offenders won’t do much to weed out scammers. Where does that leave you?

Now for something completely different, a Scottish comedian making fun of the Irish & Australia (all close to my heart!). Enjoy…