What are the various scams that one should watch out for on dating sites?

So I finally got up the nerve to register on a couple of dating sites. I’m really not sure how I feel about this process.

Mostly I feel like a menu item. sigh

One of the first responses I received was from a man who lives in Texas while I’m in California. He said he’s willing to relocate. With hardly any conversation between us, he has asked me to move to texting. When I expressed a little nervousness about that, he said it’s because he’s seldom on the site. He completely ignored my concerns about our possible political differences. He’s making me nervous and I’m not sure if I’m just being silly or what. What can he do with my phone number?

Then today I have 4 people claiming to be writing for a “friend” who happened to be looking over their shoulder and saw my profile and just think I’m fabulous, darling!
They wanted me to either write the friend at an email address they provided or call a phone number. What do they hope to gain with this?

I am a small 62 year old woman and this whole process is sort of scary. Of course, I know to never meet anyone except in a public place, but what else should I keep in mind?

I’d appreciate your advice.

Thanks in advance everyone.

I know nothing of dating websites, but a scam is a scam and my BS meter is in the red…as far as the texting guy, no, do not give up your phone number, it could be as simple as phishing for numbers, but why would he be on a dating website if he doesn’t want to communicate through it?

As far as the others, it reminds me of all the recruiters that try to do devious things to get me to talk to them, it pisses me off, why would I trust someone to tell me the truth about a potential job when they can’t tell our receptionist the truth as to why they are calling?

Hang in there, you’ll find some good ones, my brother did, but if it sounds phishy, it probably is…JMHO…

Yeah, looks like scams…

Yikes…

"Let’s leave the site: Online dating sites have the ability to monitor and boot members who exhibit problematic behavior or are perpetrating scams, so con artists want to quickly move their victims elsewhere. Beth Kipps, who has experimented with several dating sites, says the men who have attempted to con her almost always have a reason why they shouldn’t continue to communicate via Match.com or eHarmony. Most commonly, the excuse is “My membership on this site is almost up. How about if we text or communicate though our personal phone/email?”

Moving off-site before launching a scam reduces the chance that you’ll report the crook to the relevant site. That’s important to the con artist, who’ll want to troll the site again for future victims when done with you. Do your fellow legitimate members a favor and be sure to report abusers."

At the least, if you want to keep communicating with the first man, get yourself a new email address, not containing any personal information (I wouldn’t use Gmail, because Google just knows to darn much about me) and not used for anything else. Communicate through that new email address.

I like a service called mail.com, because it’s not affiliated with any other internet service I use.

In any case, use a different email address for dating sites because they will send you all the emails ever. Like, dozens per day, it seems.

Your username sort of sums it up.:slight_smile:

To clarify; there’s a lot of BS on these sites and has been for a long time. Be patient and cautious and expect the same from the people you meet. Good luck, I met Mrs. Gap on the net:)

‘I am a US soldier…’

It’s almost guaranteed to be a scam asking you to wire money to them.

If they ask you for money. I know that ones a given, but I wanted to put it out there.

If they ask/tell you to go to another website. I mean, ‘look at this youtube clip’ or ‘I bought this on Amazon’ is one thing, what I’m talking about is “Check out my KiK profile” or “I can’t talk on here because I’m not registered, but you can find me on this other site”. Probably a scam, you’ll likely need to use a credit card on the other site and the profile you saw is just a bot.

The “I’m willing to relocate” one is a ploy to get you to buy them plane tickets (or give them money for them). There’s plenty of people within a 10 or 20 miles range of you, don’t bother with the ones that claim to live hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Profiles, or messages suggesting a meetup right away, at a specific location when it’s clear they don’t know the area. I never did figure out what the deal with that one was, but for a while I was getting lots of [unsolicited] messages that started right off with something like ‘you seem nice, how about we meet next week at [bar] at [address]’. The first one seemed odd since A)they had the name of the bar backwards (it’s called Cafe Lulu and they called it Lulu Cafe) and B)why give the address? But then I got tons more, all with the same bar, with the full address and the bar name backwards.
Like I said, don’t know what the deal was with that one, but it was something.

There’s plenty of others, you’ll learn to spot fake profiles very quickly. But the biggest thing is if you need to pull out your credit card before you’ve seen the person face to face, you’re getting scammed, and to reiterate, that includes having to register at some other dating site.

And this is just sticking to scams and ignoring a lot of other things, for example, cut and pasted messages or bots.
Also, don’t hesitate to have some kind of “I’m safe” plan. Tell at least one other person where you’re going and who you’re with (or even leave a note on your kitchen table so someone can find it) and you won’t hurt anyone’s feelings if someone checks up on you. Plenty of first dates that I’ve been on have been briefly stopped as she got a phone call. I assume it’s just a ‘everything okay?’ phone call. Safer for you and not a big deal for him.

Well a lot of people try dodging the fees from using the site espicallyif they use credits or a pay per letter scheme … The international sites are good at this …3 credits for this 4 credits for that and you get 100 credits for 19.99…

If you’re an average looking man and a hot woman writes you first there is a 99% chance it is a scam.

The ‘419’ scam. Usually a man or woman (of any race) who usually lives in some Sub-Saharan African country will charm you, ask you for some money to help with a sudden emergency, college tuition, rent. This process can go on for years before they finally drain your account.

I think Dr Phil has an episode of a woman who sent approximately $1 million to her ‘boyfriend’ in Nigeria and she’s still in denial that he’s a con artist.

A lot of women feel like we have to be polite at all costs. I feel like that’s how you’re going here, from the start. The fact that this Texas guy is not listening to your concerns and you’re coming here kinda trying to make sure you’re not just being silly is a red flag for me.

It’s ok and great to be polite, but you don’t owe anyone anything. You can stop a conversation any time you like. The guy might come back with some nasty words for you but that’s on him, not you. Don’t be afraid of words (especially if you’ve followed the above advice and not given out any personal information).

Don’t feel like you’re stuck with the guys who write, or the guys who write back. You can be choosy, and you can choose to be alone a bit longer instead of settling for someone just because you both happened to be on the same site.

When you are finding a mate offline, you may remember that things were a little more smooth at the beginning because however you met, there was a shared circumstance. Maybe you’re from the same area, know some of the same people, work in the same place or hang out in the same place. When looking for someone online it’s a little more raw. A little more distant. You have to do a little more work. Conversely, you have a bigger pool to choose from and a lot more presumably true information to look at before you strike up a conversation. It has its advantages and disadvantages.

I’m not telling you to be a frigid bitch and go around like you’ve got a 100 men lined up to kiss your feet. But you also do not need to interact with anyone a minute longer than you want to. You gotta protect yourself, and don’t be polite for politeness’ sake. Get used to saying a firm “no, thank you.” Some guys will bow out gracefully, some will retort nastily, but you will find someone better who’s worth your time.

I agree with ZipperJJ. Even if Texas guy is not a scam, he’s being pushy and not very nice. Someone who doesn’t care about your legitimate concerns is to be ruled out even if he isn’t a scam.

I think most dating sites are scams in that the free user is so limited in abilities that they end up paying. Dating apps like Tinder are terrible, too, for guys or girls looking for a long-term-relationship and not a quick hump and bidding adieu to each other.

I don’t know from dating websites - are they contacting you thru the website, or sending you email to an already established address? Either way, I would block anyone who said the things you mention in the OP.

You are not being silly. He’s a creeper - cut off contact, or he will start texting you pictures of his genitalia.

They will send you links so you download malware onto your PC, try to get money out of you, or reroute your call to somewhere long-distance and rack up charges on your phone bill.

It’s nothing personal - the people who do this do it to everybody. Block them, report them to the website, maybe someone decent will be along sooner or later.

People tell you who they are. It’s up to you to listen when they do. If someone pings your radar, it is usually for a reason, and that should be enough to disqualify anyone from your attention. You don’t have to put up with losers for fear of missing Prince Charming - Prince Charming doesn’t do creepy stuff right off the bat.

Regards,
Shodan

You don’t need to respond to or explain yourself to anyone who’s alarming you. Period.

All dating sites are infested with Nigerians. One way to find out is to get them to email you at a yahoo email address and you pull up the headers and trace the IP addresses. If one shows up in Lagos then you know. Another way is to ask for a brief video chat right away just to confirm they are not a Nigerian. Make sure their lips match their words and they don’t have excuses like “my camera’s broken” or other such nonsense, they have been known to use videos of other people and just talk during the video. If they say they travel around a lot on business and try to brag, watch out.

You can usually tell because English is always their second language and even though the grammar is pretty good they use a lot of expressions like god fearing and others that they think make them sound more sincere. They get all buddy buddy or mushy right away and use mostly the same wording in their profiles. Read enough profiles of the best looking guys and you’ll run across a few, they usually use photos of models or movie stars. I once saw a photo of Mark Harmon being used by one, it was hilarious.

No matter what, they will eventually ask for money after they think they’ve buttered you up. The excuses vary wildly. One guy asked me to lend him $20,000 to pay his customs taxes so he could get his merchandise out of London. Up until that point I really didn’t know I was emailing with a Nigerian, I was new to it. I can’t believe that isn’t obvious to everyone, I don’t care how desperate and lonely they are. But a lot of people are sending them money, that’s why they’re doing it.

You can’t really go by their phone numbers because they can get numbers that seem to be far away from where they are located. They always have an excuse for questions they can’t answer to your satisfaction, definitely trust your spidey sense. If they ever want money for anything they are to be blocked and dropped immediately.

Incidentally, a lot of the girls on dating sites are Nigerians, too. They have to get more creative with their excuses of why they can’t voice chat with you. But they will still string you along. I helped one friend years ago with his online girlfriend he kept telling me about. I told him to pull up one of her emails, showed him how to look at the headers and we traced the IP addresses right there on his computer. He was really dumbfounded to see it show up on the map in Lagos, Nigeria. He was really pretty upset and pissed off but I had to put an end to it.