Technology has made our lives easier in numerous ways even enabling millions of lives to find right partner. People have been using different types of dating apps for more than a decade. In the 90’s when internet usage rapidly growing the first online dating app, Match.com launched in 1995 helped pioneer online dating industry. It was the first app to create romantic opportunities for singles, allowing them to easily find their partners in their preferred time and places. Later several popular dating apps like tinder, bumble, hinge, okcupid were launched with updated version and technology to provide online dating services. But the horrifying sides of online dating app scams can leave people shaken. Online dating scams can be devastating because scammers not only play with the emotions of victims but also steal money.
According to FTC, (Federal Trade Commission) report in 2023, almost $1.14 billion in losses occurred from romance scams which was the most devastating among all imposter scams.
In India around 77 % of people encountered fake profiles on dating platforms and 39 % discovered that their online love interests were scammer (India Today). On average victim in India lose almost Rs.8000 through online dating scams. A yoga teacher from Mumbai lost ₹3.36 lakh through an online dating scam ( SheThePeople).
Reports show that, among all online romance scams, 19 % scams happen on online dating sites. And many of them reported that the scammers tried to shift the conversations to other apps like WhatsApp, Telegram etc.
Asking for money by creating fake sympathetic story is the most common form of financial fraud we hear about. However, in present situation there are many other fraudulent methods scammers use such as cryptocurrency investment, bank wire, gift cards etc. According to data reported by victims most scammers use cryptocurrency and bank wire process than any other methods and together they accounted 60 % of losses in 2022.
While dating apps are created for matchmaking, to fulfil the need of people by providing them dating partners, they are misused by many scammers who create their profiles and harass innocent individuals monetarily, physically, emotionally, and mentally. The most dangerous types of scams that scammers do most of the time are intimate activity scam, catphishing, military romance, fake dating sites, sextortion, cryptocurrency investment and many more.
In the present scenario, people are more comfortable with intimate chats. Couples get involved in intimate chats very quickly. Online dating scammers take advantage of this and target the victims and trap them. At first, they build trust and get closer to them. When the victims start to get closer, the scammer convinces them to undress, records the videos, and then begins blackmailing them for money with the footage.
This term is mainly used to describe fake profiles on online dating apps. Scammers create fake profiles with attractive, stolen, and AI-made photos to attract or target their victims. Victims start thinking that they found their perfect match. After this, when scammers start asking for sensitive information, some victims are able to understand the scams, while others fall into the trap and face different types of harassment.
The term Military Romance Scam is most common in the U.S. in recent days. In the U.S., thousands of military romance scams are conducted every day. Victims allege on different types of sites and to officials that they are involved in an online relationship with someone who claims to be in the military, asking for money, transportation costs, treatment costs, etc. Sometimes victims pay that money thinking they are doing a good deed and lose thousands of dollars with little chance of recovery. They use phrases like “they are on a mission” and “they can’t receive phone calls or video calls due to security purposes,” etc.
Some dating apps or websites offer a fake promise of easy hookups or perfect matchmaking by asking for a huge amount of money. These apps have bot or fake accounts. Through these accounts, scammers ask for personal information like ID proofs, contact numbers, or dates of birth through which they can hack victims’ bank accounts. Another process of fake dating sites is to scam people by taking personal information during the sign-in time.
Code or OTP verification scams are the most common type of scam in the present scenario. Fake dating sites sometimes send a codes or OTPs to the victim’s phone number to show that it is a verification process. In many cases, victims verify the code because a lot of legitimate apps use this procedure of verification. In other cases, scammers encourage victims to link with a third-party app to verify their account. The most common example of a code verification scam is the Tinder scam. Tinder has an account verification process but not a code verification system. To get a verified blue check mark on their account, users have to provide a series of photos that are compared to their profile photos.
Malware is a common threat online, including on online dating sites. Sometimes scammers, after some conversation, insist victims connect with them on other social media sites through links. However, those links are spam or malware links through which victims land on illegitimate pages, and scammers steal personal data for fraudulent activity.
Sextortion is a practice where scammer threaten victim to reveal sexually compromising information, unless the victim fulfils the demand. These days, this practice is most common on online dating sites because users easily get involved in intimate relationships.
Cryptocurrency investment scam is another scamming type in in dating app sites. At first, the fraudsters build a strong relationship with the victims. Later, the fraudsters start talking about crypto investments and manage to get the victims to agree to investments. Eventually, they extract a huge amount of money from the victims before disappearing from their lives.
Social Engineering on online dating sites is a tactic of manipulating, influencing, or deceiving people, so they give up confidential information. Scammers tell you stories that not only steal your heart but also your money. People in different parts of the world encounter different scams through online dating. Here are some case histories.
A 25-year-old man in Delhi met a girl through the online dating site, Bumble. The girl approached him to meet in a bar in Rajouri Garden. The girl ordered drinks and the bill was almost ₹16000 which was a inflated bill, according to that man. He claimed that he was forced to pay the bill and later he found that the bill was missing. Later, the boy got to know that the girl was a scammer and her account and name were fake. He also mentioned that many bars and clubs hire girls to conduct these sorts of illegal operations.
A 55-year-old Italian man living in Hong Kong, involved in an affair with a scammer who introduced herself as an investment broker in Singapore. The fraudster convinced the victim to create an account in an unauthentic digital money investing website for a higher return on the investment. Eventually, the victim transferred almost 14 crores to different bank accounts and lost all the money. This incident happened in March, 2023.
A 37- year- old Indian woman from US after her divorce, was looking for a romantic relationship on a dating site, Hinge. She matched with a guy named Ancel who introduced himself as a French Wine Trader from Philadelphia. They quickly moved their conversation on WhatsApp and started talking through video calls, messages etc. The scammer guy deleted his account from Hinge to show fake loyalty towards the woman. After several days, they started talking about their retirement planning. Somehow the scammer convinced the woman to invest in an illegitimate crypto investment app. At first the app allowed to withdraw money to appear as legitimate but later, on when the woman invested a huge amount almost $450,000, the alarm bell went off, the app demanded personal tax when she tried to withdraw money.
This type of scam is commonly known as pig butchering where the scammer uses the practice of flattening up of their targets by building trust before slaughtering and stealing their money.