Dating Scams
Unfortunately, fraud occurs on many dating sites, and especially when there are foreign people on the dating site.
We try hard to avoid dating scams on our dating site, and here is therefore some good advice on how you can best avoid being scammed on a dating site:
Pictures:
If a dating profile only has one picture, or if the picture seems a little too "perfect", then it could be a model photo found online. If you are unsure or in doubt about the authenticity of the photo, ask the person for more photos if you feel unsure about the authenticity of the photo.
If you chat with new acquaintances on a dating site, don't share intimate photos where you are naked or otherwise vulnerable. Always remember that these kinds of intimate photos or sensitive information about yourself can be used for blackmail if you are unfortunate enough to come into contact with a dating scammer.
Profile description:
Before contacting someone on a dating website or via social media or responding to an inquiry, you should carefully assess their profile description. If the person is from an English-speaking country, watch out for suspiciously bad spelling and grammar. Although you cannot expect everyone to write perfectly, very serious grammatical errors and endlessly long sentences without punctuation can be a danger signal that it is a profile description that has been directly translated in Google Translate or another translation program. People with English as their mother tongue or second language often have a natural flow in their profile description, which cannot be easily imitated in a translation program. Therefore, be wary if something seems "strange" in the language or the way things are worded.
Mail and chat messages:
If the first email/chat messages and profile descriptions sound too good and rosy, then you should definitely be wary. Often dating scammers will not waste their time writing their own material, but often instead take text material from other sites or dating profiles. Here it is a good idea to run the suspicious text through an internet search and see if results with the same text appear. If this happens, do not respond to the dating scammer.
Often, the dating fraudster will also quickly try to get you away from the dating site and continue the conversation by email, mobile or Skype, so that their fraudster profile is not discovered or reported.
If the email/chat conversation takes place in English and bears the stamp of a Google Translate translation, then you have to be on the lookout for whether it could be someone trying to cheat you.
Emotions:
Online dating scammers often look for so-called "lonely and vulnerable" profiles who are very impatient for human contact in our increasingly alienated world. But here it is important that you don't let yourself be "dazzled by love" at the expense of your common sense. If you have in the back of your mind and have knowledge of the most common methods behind dating scams and how to avoid scammers, then you have good prerequisites to maneuver around the fake dating profiles, and instead find true love, which fortunately is applicable to far the predominant dating profiles.
Impatience:
While strong feelings often sprout within the first few weeks of most dating romances, dating scammers will often try to speed up this process further (to reduce the risk of detection) by not only bombarding you with a ton of compliments and cute loving words, but also with intimate details of their own lives that they have "only" told you. And another danger signal is that if, shortly after the initial contact, the dating fraudster asks for a small amount to help cover strange expenses – for example, that their credit card has been blocked in a foreign country, that person himself or a family member has contracted an acute illness , or that they have just been robbed and that person needs you to transfer money as soon as possible. So if money is ever asked then you should end the contact and report the dating profile to the relevant dating site. Therefore, do not transfer money to a person you have not met in the real world - no matter how convincing that person's story sounds.
Strange contact information:
Be aware of unusual/strange telephone numbers (there may be expensive payment hotlines), and/or post office box numbers without a street name. These can be typical signs of a person who does not want to leave a mark.
Protect your own safety:
Without being paranoid, it is a good starting point to protect your own safety. Therefore, do not reveal too much about yourself too soon (and not any personally sensitive information at all), and be cautious until you feel more comfortable with the person you are talking to, especially when talking about more personal things such as your job, family or home . A dating scammer will always be on the lookout for your most private data and information, which he can risk using against you.
Here at Asia Dating 4 You, we have set up our Safe Program - which you can use if you plan to meet a dating match in the real world - precisely to counter dating fraud, as well as to optimize the safety of our members. You can read more about ours Safe Program Here.
Furthermore, we have ID validated a number of our female members, where we know their identity and therefore know that there is a "real" person behind the profile, and all the profiles that we have ID validated have a small ID validation sign on their profile picture.