With the Internet becoming more feasible to use and being the practical option to many other services, more and more people are using it for various activities – right from buying groceries to looking for soulmates. However, all is not well with the Digital sunrise, because some unscrupulous and dishonest characters try time and again to run elaborate as well as dumb scams to rob people off their money and identities.
Online dating scams may still be the most despicable of crimes, simply because one does not just lost some money or an identity when they fall for one of these scams, but in many cases some lose a piece of their innocence – another one joins the forum of ‘the Internet is full of heartless individuals’.
Being fooled in an dating scam may yet be the most emotionally draining and frustrating experience for a person – an experience which would make for a blockbuster chicklit any year, any season, any market. Of course, all of us would like our lives to be made into a movie, but not in this style. Therefore, make sure that you consider these online dating tips as sound online dating advice before you click on that pink little button on the online dating site.
Look at the Photograph:
One of the first online profile tips that you should keep in mind is to look at the photograph of the person. Many online dating scammers put up fake photographs, which are basically quite blatantly false if one looks at them carefully. Once you go through the picture carefully, you would be better equipped to decide whether the profile is the real deal or is it an online dating fraud. Also, another thing to keep in mind is the consistency between the photographs if there are multiple photographs available. It is easy to steal one particular photo off the net and paste it as theirs, and one can even get away with multiple photos of the same person at an event, but it is quite difficult to get multiple photos of the same person at different events. That’s something that you should keep in mind.
Read the Message:
If you get contacted by profiles in the online community, you should pay special attention to the message, and anything that does not seem practical or logical should be kept in in mind. For example, some online dating scammers use flowing prose and almost say that they are ready to marry you – with only the basic information that you have provided in your profile accessible to them. Others may even use the sympathy wave and write a message that would tell you something like ‘Anyone will do’, which should again have you press panic buttons.
Said the Spider to the Bug:
A classic hallmark of the dating scam is when the online dating scammer informs or even begs the user to contact them on a personal email – away from the website. Simply put, a person would not give out a personal email quite lightly to another one – and definitely not someone who is looking for a commitment or a long term relationship. Also, some websites do not even allow users to share personal emails, and these geniuses come up with ways that they can curve around the system – not someone whom we’d like to spend the rest of our lives with anyway – ignore.