Online dating is one of the best ways of meeting new people and making new friends in an era where time is short and meeting people who share similar interests in real life is getting more and more difficult. However, due to the extreme popularity of online dating, a large number of scammers have started to operate on online dating sites in order to earn money by fooling unassuming people who simply want to find other singles online. There are high chances of your meeting good people whom you might want to get into a relationship through online dating forums provided you know how to identify and avoid online dating scams. In order to help you safely date online, we list below some of the most common scam tactics, which may help to identify online dating scammers better.

Almost all of us might have come across people who fake their names, their locations and their jobs on dating sites, and while most of them are pretty harmless, some of them could actually prove to be dangerous. If someone you meet over the internet keeps on changing his profession or location or keeps repeating the same information time and again, it could be that you are dealing with one of online dating scammers who are feeding the same old stories to a number of people like you. Usually online dating scammer use same answer templates and forget about message history. If you see that your online dating friend repeating many time or every time telling you different stories about his past be cautious.

Now there are different ways and means by which the poor sucker will approach you. In most cases, this will be a female with a really sad story that she will either tell you the first time that you chat or will first create the aura of a mystery woman and then finally break the news on you that she needs money for a severe illness, or that she needs money because her mom’s dying, or because she’s in a foreign country where she’s been pick-pocketed or mugged and has no money to come back home at all. Will you please electronically transfer some money into her account so that she can come back home to America, England or Australia from cheating and mugging Somalia, Egypt or Timbuktu?  

While you might really think that the person you are chatting to is honest and actually needs money, she could be a criminal and you can find yourself getting charged for helping in criminal activities by paying her. On the other hand, you can end up losing your hard earned money forever to someone who will kiss you a virtual goodbye the moment her purpose is served. On top of all this, in most cases, “she” will most probably be a “he”, spinning along a lot of other innocent imbeciles like you on his little finger.

This can start off as a normal chat or mail relationship, and suddenly the girl or guy you are about to fall in love with wants to meet you but…you know he/she is right now in another country and simply cannot manage the money for it. So if you also feel the same way about him or her, why don’t you send some money to pay for the airfare? Do you really want to get into a serious relationship with a guy or a girl who starts leaching you the moment you get friendly?  Most probably you don’t but if you still have masochistic tendencies and want to send money, please don’t do this because this is just another one of those dating scams tactics.

This scam tactic is the easiest one to identify. All you need to ask your online date is whether the ultra glam photograph that you almost know for sure is some model’s and the answer to your question is a, “ Not at all. That’s just me.” Ask your online date to send some more pictures and if he or she is unable to send them or they still look too good to be true, then it is most probably some phoney who is taking you for a ride.

At the same time, remember that very good-looking people do exist and do not reject a profile just because it comes with a set of great pics. In example Anastasia International dating site is working very hard to identify scammers and remove them from a site. They have unique anti-scam protection system involved but their women photos are too sexy and beautiful to be true. This bother new site users but after viewing video ads you will understand that women are really very nice but their photos were edited in Photoshop with different filters to make them more attractive. But it does not mean that person you want to contact is a scam artist only because she has model-type photo.

Since most people running dating scams do not work all by themselves, you might find that even if you send a message at a time when a person is simply not supposed to be looking through his or her dating messages, you receive a reply within ten to fifteen minutes. This is because at least one person from the gang is busy monitoring and replying to messages whether you set up a date or not and you get your replies even at 3 am in the night. Get suspicious if your virtual friend shows this kind of promptness in replying to your unexpected messages.

Sometimes it’s not easy to identify dating scammer on the net because some of them are professionals and you can’t identify them until you send money to them. So common rule you must follow when dating online is not to send money for tickets, drugs, birthdays and other occasions. At least think about scam danger before you send money to someone on the web.