Safe Dating Tips: How To Not Get Scammed
In 2019, reported losses to romance scams reached $200,000,000. In 2020? $300,000,000. According to the statistics, a median dollar loss for 1 person was $2,500 in 2020—and this is not something a person can let go of easily. Here, we’ll tell you how to not get scammed and what to do if you feel something is wrong with that pretty girl on a dating website.
Safe dating tips: What to do if you’re being scammed?
The point is, it’s not that easy to understand that you’re being scammed right now. However, there are certain red flags you need to be aware of—for example, if a woman you’ve never met with wants you to send her money, it’s a 100% red flag.
Let’s imagine a beautiful Korean woman you met on a dating site a week ago says something like “my laptop is going to die, please, send me some money so that I can buy a new one.” Here’s what you have to do:
- Block her immediately
- Report her
Yes, that’s all! It’s straightforward as that, and you should not continue your dialogue in such a case. Instead, block the account, report her, make screenshots, send them to the support team—they’ll delete the scam profile sooner or later. That’s how you will protect yourself and lots of other men from being scammed by this particular scammer.
But it’s not always about money, of course. Scammers often want their victims to reveal contact or financial information—if they are good at social engineering, you will probably not even understand that something is going wrong. But if you feel that something is wrong, it probably is—and if a beautiful woman on a dating site wants you to tell her your credit card number, this is undoubtedly a red flag. So what to do in such a situation?
Block and report. That’s all you can do here, and that’s the fastest and the best way to save your money.
Top 4 safe dating tips for online dating
As we’ve just said, there are two things you have to do when you meet a scammer on a dating site: to block him and to report him. But what do you have to do to not get into this situation? Here, you’ll find the top list of safe dating tips:
- Do not send money to women. There are lots of types of romance/dating scams, but in the absolute majority of cases, it’s all about stealing your money. No matter what reasons they will come up with, no matter how realistic it will look to you—just don’t send money to women on dating websites, and you’ll be ok.
- Use a trusted dating website. Basically, that’s the very first thing you have to do when it comes to online dating. Unfortunately, there are lots of fake and scam dating sites, and you need to be very careful when choosing one. The point is, it’s not always individuals who want to steal your money; sometimes, it’s dating sites that have such goals. One of the most common techniques such websites use is fake profiles that send you tens of messages, thus making you spend money. That’s why you must read all the reviews you can find about the site you’re going to use—because the cost of a mistake can be quite high.
- Don’t reveal your contact or financial information. You surely don’t want one of those foreign credit card scammers to buy a brand-new iPhone with your card, right? That’s exactly why you don’t want to share this kind of information with the girls you meet on a dating website.
- Google everything about the woman you’re chatting with. A simple Google research won’t make you a stalker—it’s just what you have to do to understand if you’re chatting with a real person or with a bot. If it’s a bot, remember: block&report.
Of course, there are many types of romance scams—for example, some of them are performed by dating sites, not by individuals. Read this post to understand how it works and how to avoid this type of scam.
