Romance fraud – scamming someone on the pretext of wanting to start a relationship – is on the rise since the lock down started especially since the start of 2021. In 2020, people lost up to $200 million due to falling victims to romance fraud. According to Check Point Research, over 400 malicious Valentine’s Day-related phishing campaigns were spotted on a weekly basis in January.
People engaging in social interactions and online relationships need to be extra vigilant as our lock down loneliness is being exploited by threat vectors and malicious actors online. Research in one region in the UK shows romance scam victims are groomed, then tricked out of an average of £47,000.
Watch out for ‘Red Flags’
Hackers and attackers these days are pretty savvy when it comes to coming up with new ways of scamming someone. From social engineering schemes to sophisticated phishing attacks, they are very adept at their methods. But there still are a few methods by which you can differentiate between a scammer and a genuine person.
Following are some of the red flags that online daters should look out for:
- Is your admirer moving really fast?
- Showering you with compliments and professing love within a short time frame?
- Is your match claiming they are temporarily living or working abroad, and/or continuously making up excuses to avoid voice and video calls?
- Has your pursuer asked for money?
- Do they need money to fly home, help a family member with an emergency, or offered to send you money for an “investment”?
- Did they start talking about a money windfall they’ve earned in stocks or crypto currency investment, and invites you to invest?
The above is not an exhaustive list by any means. As mentioned before, scammers are always evolving and coming up with new ways to trick the general public.
Be vigilant
Following are some suggestions that we should keep in mind as a general rule of thumb:
- online daters should not send any money, allow the other person to access their bank account, transfer money or take out a loan on the other person’s behalf
- neither should they hand over copies of personal documents such as their passport or driving licence
- or invest money on the other person’s advice
- do not receive or send parcels on the other person’s behalf
- perform a reverse image search on a search engine to see if person is using fake images
- contact your bank immediately if you think you have fallen for a scam and report it to Action Fraud
Very gd information for online daters. Timing of blog is also appropriate. Everybody should be careful in online money transactions. Thanks for sharing. Want one blog on online hacking in water tank in US.
Very nice article.timely.there are many such incidences and hope this article will warn people going by such dating sites.