Don't get scammed

Online dating sites are full of scammers.

Online romance scams are carefully planned. Men and women all over the world lose billions of dollars to scammers, and often get their hearts broken as well.

In fact, the first young woman I met here in the Philippines was a scammer. She dressed nicely, had a sweet face and a soft voice. Lying was her best developed skill.

The scammers will have attractive profiles and offer intimacy. Later, they will create a crisis to get you to send money. Occasionally they will try blackmail.

Scammers plan their actions in advance, patiently following their planned step-by-step agenda Scammers often promise love, money, or a job to get your money.

Sometimes, scammers use romance to invest in fake apps or to use fake gambling websites. The victim spends more and more without ever receiving their money back.

There are also group scammers. A person could find himself in an investment group where all the other members are scammers. Or, you could be asked to send money to help get a fake job.

Also, although legal, multilevel marketing schemes are scams. Their products are overpriced, and recruiters are hoping to get a big portion of their victim’s initial sign-up fee as their primary goal --as, after all, for example, why would the public wish to pay ?1,000 for vitamin C through a multilevel when Shopee will charge you only ?100 (and actually you can just buy a piece of fruit or eat a tomato and get plenty of vitamin C naturally?).

Avoid sharing financial information or sending money.

Don't send sexy photos to strangers. These might be used to blackmail you.

Pay attention to spelling and grammar. Scammers often pretend to reside in English-speaking countries, when they actually are in non-Western countries. Iran, Africa, India, Indonesia, and Romania host a high number of scammers.

Reach out to your loved ones, trustworthy third-party organizations, and law enforcement agencies for help.

In my personal experience, when I was in America, beautiful women sent me love notes and pictures, even videos. Later, I found out these were easily stealable shots of the Filipina TV stars (I'm not rich nor handsome, how did I get so lucky? Hehehe.)!

By the way, you can use image and name-reverse searches to help identify these thieves.

Richard Baker

Dumaguete City