One thing that aggravates me most with some online dating sites is when I invest a lot of time getting to know someone only for them to eventually ask for money. These are fake profiles designed to tell you everything you want to hear and will never develop into a lasting friendship. Watch out when somebody won’t get on the phone or Zoom call with you. They are likely hiding their true identity.

Now, there are some legitimate reasons to not expose yourself too soon.  Women, especially, should not give out too many personal details to their new online friend.  You don’t want to attract stalkers or those with evil intent.  They are certainly out there and prowling around for their next victim. You should do a little due diligence and investigate the person you’re writing to and see if they have any kind of other online presence and does it match the person you’re writing. You might even want to spend a few bucks and perform a background check on them.

Never send money to anyone you meet online without verifying their true identity.

Here’s how the money scam seems to develop:

• You find the absolute perfect person that seems to be the fulfillment of your dreams.
• Their messages quickly turn to how much they love you and just want to be with you.
• They’ll promise you they are genuine and only want to visit you where they’ll prove their love for you.
• Then, after a few emails, you’ll get a message telling you they’re having trouble with something and need your help… which of course is to send money to rescue them.
• Their desperate messages to you for help might make sense, and who wouldn’t want to help them?  You’re a compassionate person, right?
• Don’t do it!
• They’ll probably respond in some way making you feel guilty for abandoning them in their time of need.
• The whole interaction you’ve had is not with a genuine person.  It’s been a fantasy carefully crafted with some sophisticated psychological mind control tricks that has not been real from the beginning.
• Don’t bother writing back with your reason for not helping.  Your apologies, or whatever, is going to a fictitious person who could care less about your reason and care even less for you.
• They only want your money.

Here’s something to consider about your online messages and photographs you might share:

If you’re communicating with a scammer with two brain cells they can put together, they are most likely harvesting your text and photographs to pull off their next scam.  Things you write about your goals and dreams, interesting things you’ve done, job experiences, or travels, your heartfelt emotions, your faith, and anything else that comes from your heart makes for great original content they can copy and paste to their next victim that sounds so genuine. You can often recognize you’re been scammed when your match does not reply in a genuine way to your messages or when their grammar is awkward (English is not their native language). And your photographs, especially the risque ones are valuable to the scammer for creating their next fake profile.  Be careful what you share online.  Once you do share what you think is private becomes permanently embedded in the wild crazy digital online world available to anyone who takes advantage of it.

Here’s another online dating scam in my opinion.

How many online dating sites claim to be free to join and search for your match?  Sounds good, so you set up your free profile, and oftentimes even before you can get that complete you begin to get instant messaging chats from numerous members that want to chat with you.  Makes you think there’s real promise here, right?  Although I can’t prove this as fact, I suspect these messages are not genuine and only want to entice you to upgrade to a paid membership or pay in some kind of online currency to continue the conversation.  Once they have your credit card number, the instant messages introducing themselves to you mysteriously stop.

Call me skeptical or whatever.  Yes I am… I have been scammed in these ways and want to warn you so you’re not heartbroken by some online fantasy.

“Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.”

The victims of these online dating scams are generally lonely, vulnerable, and desperate to meet someone.  Instead of believing you’re going to meet your perfect match easily online, instead get yourself grounded and work on yourself and develop the traits that make you attractive and worthy of the love you seek.

Not all online dating sites are scams and there are genuine people there wanting to meet you, but you’ve got to be cautious.  I have friends and family members that have met their match online that eventually led to marriage.  Just don’t allow yourself to get caught up in the excitement and promise.  Slow down and understand genuine relationships develop over time and follow a time-tested series of actions.

If you fall victim to one of these, or other online dating scams, don’t allow it to sour you to online dating or even worse, shatters your trust in men or women.  These people are not real and there is no real person that broke your heart.  Don’t wallow in your sorrow.  Dust off your feet and move on.  There is someone real out there somewhere waiting to hear from you.

Online dating sites are great for making initial contacts with people you may be compatible with, but the goal should be to get offline as quickly as possible and develop a genuine relationship.