Protect Yourself From Romance Scams: What You Should Be Looking Out for

A romance scam occurs when a criminal creates a profile online and pretends to build a romantic relationship with a victim in order to exploit them for financial gain. In many cases, these accounts are completely fake, although there are some high-profile examples of romance scams that have involved scammers using their real identities.

It’s becoming easier to orchestrate these scams on platforms like WhatsApp with AI-generated imagery and messages, which means you need to be on your guard when talking to people you’ve never met before, especially if they ask for money.

In this guide, we elaborate on what romance scams are, how they typically progress, and easy steps you can take to avoid them. It’s all about keeping your money, time, and emotions safe.

Key Takeaways

• A romance scam occurs when someone creates a fake identity and builds a romantic relationship with you to manipulate you for financial gain.
• Romance scams usually follow a predictable pattern—contact, building trust, creating urgency, and asking for money.
• To avoid romance scams, maintain a healthy level of caution on the internet, and never share personal information or money with a stranger.
• Red flags of romance scams include fast declarations of love, excuses for not visiting you in person, and eventually asking for money.

What Are Romance Scams?

A romance scam is a type of online dating scam in which a scammer creates a fake identity and begins a romantic relationship with you. After building trust, the scammer uses their emotional influence to exploit you financially.

How romance scams work

Romance scams usually progress in a somewhat predictable manner:

1. Preparation: The scammer makes a fake profile on a dating app or social media platform, typically with an attractive profile photo.
2. Contact: The scammer reaches out to you and starts a conversation with the intent of building a relationship.
3. Building trust: The scammer tells you stories, sends you photos, and shares details about their life in order to create an emotional bond with you and build trust.
4. Creating a scenario: The scammer fabricates a fake scenario to create a sense of urgency, such as a medical emergency or a sudden desire to buy a flight and visit you in person.
5. Financial request: The scammer asks for money or personal details from you, assuring you it will help their situation. They use their emotional connection with you and the fabricated sense of urgency to loosen your defenses.
6. Escalation: If you agree and send over the money, the scammer continues making up new situations, asking for more money until you can no longer comply.

How To Avoid Romance Scams

To protect yourself from romance scams, it’s important to be cautious and recognize the warning signs early. Here are some tips to help you stay safe online.

Be cautious

In every case, the best way to prevent a scam is to avoid it before it even happens. To do this, always practice common-sense caution when interacting with strangers online.

• Protect your personal information: Always think twice before sending email addresses, passwords, or physical addresses to someone online. If you’ve never met the person, a good rule of thumb is to simply never send personal information under any circumstances.
• Use secure communication channels: Stick to social media sites like Instagram and Facebook or well-known dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, or Hinge.
• Trust your instincts: If something seems too good to be true, or if it just feels a little “off,” take a step back and think before engaging further.

Watch for red flags

If a romance scammer has targeted you, there will be many telltale signs. Here are the most common:

• They’ll quickly move your interactions away from dating apps or social media, preferring messaging apps or texting.
• They’ll try to build emotional bonds quickly, using pet names and declaring love sooner than normal.
• They’ll make excuses for why they can’t visit you in person, such as being abroad for work or travel, even though they really want to.
• They’ll bring up their financial problems frequently, hoping you’ll proactively offer to help.
• They’ll ask you to send them money, gift cards, or other expensive items.
• They may ask you to open new bank accounts to receive wire transfers from their business contacts or for investments.

Verify identities

There’s nothing wrong with getting to know a potential partner online, but it’s essential to verify their identity before becoming too emotionally invested.

Here are some easy ways to do that:

• Find the person on other apps: For example, if you met this person on Tinder, see if you can find their Instagram or Facebook accounts as well. Do their photos look like stock images, or are they authentic and varied? Do they have friends who also seem genuine and active on social media?
• Use reverse image search: Upload an image to a search engine to find where else that image appears online, helping you verify if it’s authentic or stolen.
• Schedule live calls: It’s very difficult for a scammer to maintain their fake identity during a live video call, so requesting one is a good way to weed out scammers. That said, deepfakes and other AI technologies are becoming more advanced every day, which means this may not be the case for long.

Avoid sending money

Romance scams almost always culminate in a request for money or other valuable items like gift cards or smartphones. Here’s how to deny the request without feeling bad about it:

• Never send money to strangers: Make a rule that, no matter what, you’ll never send money or private information to someone you haven’t spent significant time with in person. Inform them of this rule early on. This will help protect you from both financial fraud and identity theft.
• Don’t feel guilty: Romance scammers specialize in guilt-tripping their victims. If you’re not totally certain the person is a scammer, and you’re feeling guilty, offer them emotional support, but stand firm in your resolve not to send money.

Report suspicious activity

Victims of romance scams often fail to report them because they feel stupid and ashamed that they were tricked—or even that they came close to being tricked.

• Don’t be embarrassed: In 2022 alone, nearly 70,000 people fell prey to a romance scam—and those were only the reported ones!
• Know where to go: Report romance scams to the FBI’s Internet Crimes Complaint Center.
• Seek help if you’ve been scammed: Organizations like the Financial Crime Resource Center were specifically created to help get justice for scam victims.

Reporting your romance scam experience could be the very thing that keeps other potential victims from falling for such scams in the future.

Final Thoughts

Romance scammers create fake profiles, using a romantic connection to exploit their victims emotionally and financially.

To avoid them, be cautious about sharing personal information online, be aware of the common red flags, and verify the identities of online strangers before trusting them. In general, make a rule never to send money to someone you haven’t met in person.

Romance scams often take place on secure messaging apps like Telegram. If you’re a Telegram user, you might want to check out our article on Common Telegram Scams and How To Avoid Them.

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