Logged into OKC yesterday and there, front and center, was the profile of someone I know. A married someone.
The account is under her real name and has several real photos of her. Very short description with a few interests and lists her as single. Could this be a scam? Perhaps a false profile put up by a third party to somehow make her look bad? The profile is brief and at least two of the photos are also on her FB page. Someone else could easily have put this together.
Or… it could be real. In that case, she could be cheating, ending her marriage (no sign of that as far as I know) or she and her husband could have an arrangement of some kind. In other words, none of my business.
Should I contact her and tell her I saw the profile? Gently say I was concerned that someone might be trolling her, but if not, none of my business and pretend I never said anything? Or should I do nothing?
THIS. Nothing to see here, move along. You don’t know what the situation is, and you really don’t want to get in the middle of anything. Only mention it if it’s brought up to you, and even then, act surprised.
If this is a scam, and someone has copied her pictures off Facebook to set up a fake account, I’m not sure I see where the payoff is for the scammer. It’s not like someone has stolen her credit card number and is running up bills that your friend will be responsible for. I suppose if someone really hates her they could set up an OKC account, share her address and phone number with potential suitors, and then enjoy the fallout.
If the profile is real, you run the risk of embarrassing her if you bring it up. As you say, none of your business.
I suppose if you wanted to be clever you could do something like this. Tell her you saw an obvious fake profile from someone who stole her pictures and put them on OKCupid, and she should contact the site to get them removed. If it is a scammer, she can take steps to correct it. If it’s real, she can pretend it’s fake and save face.
I don’t know if stuff like that ever works outside of sitcoms. I probably wouldn’t bring it up at all.
Never been on a dating site, so I don’t know what the proper terminology is, but swipe whichever, like, poke, connect, or whatever with her profile. If the profile responds and acknowledges that you know each other, well there you go. If the profile responds and acts as if they don’t know you, then it’s probably a fake. If it’s a fake, then your friend should be advised that someone is catfishing others with her pictures. If the profile is real, so what, she put it on a public dating site. It would be interesting to see what her response would be.
If its a scam, it’s probably not aimed at specifically defrauding the OP’s friend, it’s just using her pictures and personal details to create a false profile they can use to scam other people. Here’s an example of how one such scam works.
Unless this person has above average looks (Which is the type of looks scammers want to steal. The more attractive baits get the more bites) it’s probably not a scammer.
I just don’t get this “do nothing” response. Do you all live in fucking boxes and never interact with people you know beyond saying hello and then tuck your heads back down?
If someone was using my pictures on a dating site pretending to be me, I sure as hell would want to know. And if later on I started telling you about somebody posing as me on a dating site and you piped up and said “yeah, I saw your profile on there several months ago…” I’d be WTF, dude?
And if this friend is actually legitimately putting her profile on a public dating site as a single person, while married, I’d probably just send the link to both her and her husband, along with a chicken, chicken, brown cow .wav and see what sort of response I got.
I didn’t read the article, it’s behind a paywall, but I just want to add that if it’s a fake profile with her pictures, that helps to make the profile ‘local’, so when people going poking around on facebook to see who they’re talking to, they find the person and see that they live nearby.
Some of those scam profile seem to require more effort than I’d think they’re worth.
As for what you should do, I’d vote for nothing. If you know it’s a scam, that’s one thing. If you knew that she was cheating, you’d be asking a different question. If I were you, I’d just work on the assumption that they’re split up and move on with my life.
If this were the old OkCupid or Match, that would be my suggestion. Send her an innocuous email on the site along the lines of ‘hey, Amy, how’s it going, haven’t seen you in a while’ and see what happens.
However, OKCupid no longer works like that. Without going into all the details and changes, she’ll likely never even see the email.
If he knew this was a scam/fake profile, that would make sense, I think most people wouldn’t even question it. As it stands he doesn’t know if it’s a fake profile, if they’re getting divorced, if they’re swinging or if she’s cheating.
That’s why most people are suggesting that he leave it alone.
This article gives a good summary of the damage that can be done to unsuspecting people who are the victims of fake profiles, both as the person whose information is stolen and the person responding to the ad: https://taskandpurpose.com/military-romance-scams-bryan-denny/
The OP describes this person as someone they know, not a friend, not a relative, so I’d say MYOB unless there is more to the relationship between the OP and the woman in the profile.
I think there is a major flaw in number 2 scenario. I think it’s more likely she would want to die of embarrassment, rather than just shrug it off and think of better ways to hide it.
Yeah, that’s a little bit closer to what I was getting at. The person whose photos are stolen isn’t really the victim of the scam, although it can come back to bite them when the true victims find out.
Ping them however OKC lets you (just say Hi, how are you? if you have to say anything at all) and if they either don’t reply after a few weeks or reply w/o acknowledging the acquaintance at all then contact them outside the site and keep it light. ‘Hey, I saw that you’re on OKC, too; have you had any luck?’
B/c if the profile’s real her dating life is NOYB. But if it’s fake she should be alerted.