Don't Fall for a Scammer: Some Tips for Dating Safely Online

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One of the unpleasant realities of the Internet world is the presence of scammers.

Of course, scam artists aren’t new. They were immortalized in Hollywood by characters like Harold Hill (Music Man), Nathan Detroit (Guys & Dolls), and the more modern example of Danny Ocean (Oceans 11, 12, 13). In the movies, these characters are charming rogues and often have great skills. In real life, that’s only partially true.

Internet scammers are anything but charming, don’t underestimate their skill set.

They’re highly skilled at things like knowing people’s emotional weak points and understanding how to exploit common misconceptions that good and trusting people have.

This means that protecting yourself from getting scammed is a two-step process. First, if you consider yourself a trusting person, you need to re-orientate your worldview to understand how much effort certain people will go to cheat you. Even if you don’t consider yourself a trusting person, you need to accept that you might not fully grasp the extent some people will go to lie and deceive. The second step is to follow some common “best practices” for online behavior that will protect you.

Know your weaknesses!

Let’s be honest with ourselves—all of us who have been on CatholicMatch share these two things in common: we have at least a basic Christian outlook on life, which is going to leave us compassionate to someone who says they’re in need. And we are, at least to some extent, a little lonely. That doesn’t mean desperate—but clearly, we are looking for something a little more.

Scammers know this and that’s what they’ll try and exploit. The loneliness factor gives them a wide target of people who may go too far in letting them in. The compassion factor makes us all more likely to respond to who’s trapped overseas with no money and no way of getting home.

So, start by eliminating inappropriate guilt from your life. You are not responsible for the person who claims to be up the wrong creek somewhere in Paris. If they can write to you online, they can just as easily walk into the U.S. embassy or anywhere else that’s created to provide them with help.

Even if their distress call is legitimate (which is a longshot), there are still institutions that are more suited than you are to provide assistance. And do you really want to enter a relationship with someone who’s treating you like an ATM machine before you’ve ever met? Even the best-case scenario of this person’s cry for help has a bad ending.

Make sure you know how much can be faked.

The phrase “Fake News” is now a common part of our public discourse. We can add to that “Fake Phone Number” and “Fake URL.” A scammer who’s using the “stranded in Paris” line can have a phone number set up with the international area code of France. They can even call you and make it appear on your caller ID like the call is coming from France when it could be from down the block.

To share a small bit of personal experience, I’m a sports fanatic and can tell you for an absolute fact that so-called “tout services”, that sell sports predictions for gambling purposes, set up their phone numbers so it appears that a call coming from a Baltimore suburb is really coming from the Vegas Strip.

The same can happen with domain names. The Better Business Bureau reports that con artists responded to the opportunity provided by COVID-19 to register over 2,400 domain names that looked like Zoom. With so many people new to the videoconferencing software, those fake domains were used to facilitate email scams telling people that their Zoom accounts were suspended and some type of action needed to be taken. That action would naturally involve clicking a link, which would then download a virus that could, in turn, steal personal information.

Even if that personal information doesn’t include bank accounts or anything that allows scammers to access money, it can still be used in a future scam as a way of appearing legitimate (e.g., the lost, stranded, and need cash con). That’s something to keep in mind now that Facebook has been hacked and the personal information of over 500 million people—including Mark Zuckerberg himself is floating in cyberspace.

Some basic safety tips:

The takeaway from all this is to understand just how hard a small group of people work at being dishonest. It can be hard for trusting people—and even modestly cynical people to grasp—but there really are people for whom lying is a full-time job. With that understanding in mind, follow these safety tips…

  • Don’t click on a link from anyone you don’t know.
  • Be deeply skeptical of links from people you do know—like the ones that say nothing more than “I thought you might find this interesting.”
  • Don’t ever use a gift card to send money to people.
  • For the purposes of being on CatholicMatch don’t ever send money in any form to someone you haven’t met and be really skeptical of even someone you have met, but are not in a relationship with.

Con artists put a lot of time into thinking of newer and better ways to cheat people.

But we can respond to their complex schemes with simplicity. It takes one simple word—NO. No, I will not send you money. End of discussion. If you get any message requests on CatholicMatch asking you for such, report them immediately to the help desk. We want this to be a safe place as much as you do. Anyone trying to con you is most assuredly trying it on a lot of other people.

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