Scams

A report from Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau shows that a total of 41,093 cases of fraud were reported in 2008. Of these cases a total of 54 percent were caused by personal online shopping information being stolen. 8 percent or 5,803 of the cases involved dating related scams. Of these cases:

.. 2,183 persons fell victim to online interactive dating fraud, of whom 90 percent were urban women in their 20s and 30s, with 20-somethings accounting for 51 percent and the remainder in their 30s.

The CIB further states that online dating related fraud has risen dramatically in recent years and young woman need to practice safe dating habits to better protect themselves.

For the full story read the Taiwan News.

Tom Smiley recently released on October 31, 2008 a case study in which he examines the number of fake profiles found on Craig' s List. Specifically, he took a look at all personal ads for woman seeking men in all United States cities for one day. This totalled 6,590 individual ads. In total he claims to have found that 5,564 of these personal ads appeared to be fake. This means only 16% of the ads he examined where real. Tom Smiley used 5 different methods to figure out if a personal ad was a fake. These methods were:

1. Dismissal of ads with pictures posted in multiple ads.
2. Dismissal of ads with three point randomizers.
3. Dismissal of ads with typical verbatim occurrences indicating variables in form letters.
4. Dismissal of ads that are obvious fraud.
5. Dismissal of ads that simply don't match headline w/content.

More Details can be found here on his methodology including examples. I'm not a big user of Craig's List and always thought their personals section wasn't the best place to visit to find someone to date. After reading Tom Smiley's case study I definitely wouldn't recommend Craig's List for dating to anyone.

For the full case study see Online Personals Fraud and you can view our Craig's List review.

An article at Consumer Affairs tells the story of Annette (not her real name) who met someone online at eHarmony and was ultimately scammed her life savings, over $37,000. The scammer named John, who she met online and fell in love with had reportedly traveled to Nigeria where his luggage and $45,000 in travellers checks got confiscated. Everyday his situation seemed to get worse (including the kidnapping of his daughter) which prompted him to ask Annette to send him another few thousand dollars. John used guilt in part to motivate Annette to send him money including comments about "if you loved me ..." and dealing with God and the church.

I really feel sorry for Annettes situation. Some people can be real vulnerable when they are looking for love and this is what the scammers are relying on. Annette did have several warning signs though. They were:

• Someone requested money from her who she had only chatted online and over the phone with. She had never actually met face-to-face with him.
• John was in Nigeria were a large number of dating scams seem to originate from.
• He had bad grammar and spelling.
• She did have doubts.
• According to eHarmony they did warn her about John who was discovered to be using a stolen credit card. This warning came 3 days before she sent the first $1,300. It is unclear in the article if she did see and ignored the warning.

eHarmony does offer some safety tips too its members to make sure their experience is successful and safe (see full list here). Under the heading "Always Use Your Best Judgment" they warn members:

eHarmony works hard to screen out dishonest applicants, but assessing a match's truthfulness and honesty is ultimately your responsibility. Don't ignore any facts that seem inconsistent or 'off.' Trust your instincts—if something doesn't feel right, close communication or if on a date, leave. You're in control of the entire process, so you can choose a comfortable pace for your relationship.

Watch out for someone who:

• Asks for money
• Asks inappropriate questions
• Wants to speed up the pace beyond your comfort level
• Tells stories with inconsistencies, some which may sound grandiose
• Gives vague answers to specific questions
• Urges you to compromise your principles
• Constantly blames others for troubles in his or her life
• Insists on getting overly close, overly fast.

The above tips are good for all dating sites (and social networks too). Remember this was an extreme example of what can happen to someone who is scammed. Above all I would recommend to trust your instincts, If the situation doesn't feel right then, it probably isn't.

Find out more of the story on ConsumerAffairs.com.

A Philadelphia NBC station has a video news story about a homeless man stealing more than $100,000 from thirteen woman. Seven of the woman he met on the dating service MillionaireMatch.com The accused told the victims he was a record producer who had been nominated for several Grammy Awards and that he needed investors for a new music company. He was arrested in Atlantic City where it is reported he gambled most of the money away.

It never ceases to amaze me on how some people get conned. If someone asks you for a large sum of money you just met online (or anywhere else for the matter), don't send them a dime! Block them immediately on the dating service and report them to customer service.

A Australian News Site wrote this in an article about this story:

NEWS.com.au was able to sign up to MillionaireMatch as a $US5 million-per-annum mogul without any income verification.

While this is true you can sign up to MillionaireMatch.com without any income verification, income and photo verification is available to all members for free. Members need to send to MillionaireMatch.com the appropriate documents for the verification to take place and once verified, these members are identified by a graphic icon.

For more information about the dating service MillionaireMatch.com, read our review.

CNN Living has a story that looks at scam artists, internet dating and the website RomanceScams.org, where you can report on romance scams. In my opinion the article doesn't really put online dating scams into perspective but, it did have a few good examples and tips. One excellent point includes this quote about how to identify a possible scammer:

If their spelling is horrible, they use emoticons heavily and they appear to be available at unusual hours for your time zone, they may be scamming you. Scammers often work on the Internet from other countries and use photos of others they find online. Often, a simple Google search can help identify whether your online companion is legitimate or whether he or she is simply using someone else's name and photo.

This story uses some scare tactics that I don't agree with. In one case they mention that the FBI Internet Crime Report had 206,884 complaints last year about internet fraud which cost the victims over $239 million. That's a good thing to know but this statistic appears to take into account all online business including online stores, online auction sites and the list goes on. What percentage of this is deals with online dating? Where are the statistics that compare it to other online industries or email and normal mail fraud? Maybe online dating has a better track record, who knows? You can't tell from the CNN article.

The other statistic in the story I wondered about was, according to Romance Scams website, of their 30,000 members 883 people reported losing over $8 million too online scammers. This works out too almost $10,000 per person on average. This seems a little high to me. I don't know many people who have $10 grand to give to their friends and family let alone to someone online. I wish the author had expanded on this information a bit further and included a few links to some reports.

Romance Scams is a non-profit site that does offer excellent information about dealing with and identifying online scams. A lot more dating sites are starting to take this issue more seriously and have started to include easy to find "Report Abuse" links on dating profiles that allows you to identify a scammer. Dating Services also monitor and identify scammers manually and automatically through software. Singles need to know, and to watch out for online dating scams but, you do have to keep things in perspective and use common sense.

An article called Complaints soar against online dating services in Northwest talks about the rise of complaints against dating sites in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It states, consumer complaints filed, rose 73%, in 2006 over 2005. In 2006 there were a total of 2,525 complaints to the Better Business Bureau in the area of Alaska, Oregon and Western Washington. The year 2007 is expected to increase as well. The complaints in the article where broken down into the following groups:

• 35% of the people complained about the quality of the singles available and matching system.
• 17% was for poor customer service.
• 15.1% of the complaints was in regards to the number of dates from the service.
• 13.7% where about high pressure sales tactics.

This is a sharp increase in complaints, especially since dating services have been established since well before 2005. So what has changed? I think it has a lot to do with the rise of niche dating sites. These types of sites are a lot smaller than the popular dating services and tend to be run on a shoe string budget. For this reason some niche dating site owners may be making exaggerated marketing claims on their site to try and lure in paying members. It is also pretty easy for any website to make itself appear a lot larger than it is, to trick people into a paying membership. A lot of the smaller dating services are also just a one man show which makes customer service for the site hard to keep up with, even if they have a limited number of members. Of course not all of these sites are bad, just a small percentage. Unfortantly though, it may be giving the online dating industry a bad name.

If we take a look at the numbers again 2,525 complaints are not a whole lot when you consider it has been estimated that between 30 and 40 million Americans have logged into a dating service in 2007. So let's assume a lower number of 25 million Americans who used a dating site in the year 2006. Now the question is what percentage of the population does Alaska, Oregon and Western Washington make up for in the United States. It's not large, so let's be conservative and say 3%. Now, 3% of 25 million Americans is 750,000 singles. When you measure this number against the 2,525 complaints, you get less than 0.4% of singles using dating sites actually complain to the Better Business Bureau. This is a very, very, very small number of complaints. So in a way, this article makes it seem that there are a large number of complaints against dating sites by just comparing the number of complaints with last year and not taking the total number of complaints and the actual number of singles using dating services. So what do my numbers not take into account (you are probably asking yourself)? Well, obviously not everyone will take the time to complain to the BBB. Also, not all dating services belong to the BBB, so complaints would not be filed for them. How does this affect things? I'm not totally sure but, after looking at other industries and companies in the BBB database and looking at the complaints, I feel online dating sites as a whole don't have any more complaints than any other industry on the internet. As with each industry, someone will always not be satisfied with what they bought and there will always be companies that do not have the best intentions for their customers.

So, how do you find a reputable online dating site? A good start (besides reading our site and user reviews) is the Better Business Bureau. From here you can search for the dating service to see if it belongs to the BBB. If so, it will show the complaints (if any) and if they where resolved. Remember, most large businesses will have complaints. The key here is to see if the complaints of the company where resolved to the satisfaction of the BBB. The article at kgw.com also contains some very wise tips when considering a dating service, especially one that is not as well known.