Dating Scams

Dating Scams

 28/06/09

Online dating can be risky business because of all the scams that are running these days but some websites have already made measures to address this, some of the online dating niche is still in the dark when it comes to fighting scams. The surprising thing is that many of the techniques used to relieve you of your hard earned currency are actually not illegal, and are just dodgy marketing schemes.

The majority of dating services that you will encounter will claim that they are free, but in truth, they aren’t really free. What happens with these is that they allow you to register and establish a profile and even view a few of the other members of the site, then when you find someone you wouldn’t mind messaging, instead of confirming that your message was sent a page will appear telling you about all the great membership payment plans (standard membership, silver membership, gold membership, platinum membership, etc).

Because these sites will make no mention any fees at all, a great deal of people will join them, then because they are unwilling to pay a monthly membership fee, these people will never return to that site. For those who do pay the fee, they are part of a dating site that has basically a load of unused profiles, so they will find that no messages they ever send out to people will ever be read or returned. So if a free dating site turns out to have a membership fee (especially ones that let you register first and create a profile) it will not be worth it to talk to dormant profiles.

Another regrettably effective internet dating scam, is one that requires a subscription, the thing is that these sites have very few fair dinkum human members. What I mean by human is that if you were to send a message to someone on these sites it would replied with a computer generated response. Amazingly these responses are so easily to spot for example: victim: “I really love cricket”, apparent member: “yeah swimming is great”. These sites don’t tend to last long so to avoid simply go with a service that has been around for a while.

This is a danger that many of us face, not necessarily just on the internet. You meet a person who you find quite attractive and charming, you’ve exchanged pictures and spoken on a regular basis for months, then come the signs, although subtle at first, they message saying that they are having a minor financial problem and that they wont be able to message you anymore and how they are going to miss you so much, and all you can think is of how much you enjoy conversing and fantasizing about/with this person, all they need is you to send them some money to keep their subscription/membership going. It seems such a small simple thing to do for all the hope you have for this relationship that is forming, so you do it you send them the money.

Another month passes and they message you saying they want to meet but once again they don’t have the money to come and see you, but they don’t want to put you out by making you come to them. So you send them the money to come and stay in a hotel. They send you their mobile number and tell you to meet them at a restaurant or someplace in public.

You go to this place and wait, they are soon late and they call or message you telling you how sorry they are and to wait for they will be there within the hour. They know where you live (which they found out earlier suggesting that they would like to come to your place, then changing plans to get you out of the house) and they know exactly how long they have to thieve all of your most valued possessions before you return home to find out what has been happening. You never hear from them ever again, you hand their phone number to police and they find that its either been stolen or is untraceable because of fake details given to the service provider, and that they used a pubic internet terminal to meet you online.

So in the end to ensure your best chance at finding love, make sure you use a well-established dating service, which has an exalted reputation. And no one truly worth starting a relationship would rely on you to pay their bills for them, no matter how small.