TAMPA, Fla. — When it comes to romance scams, there are many different types, and they’ve only gotten worse as more people are dating online.
Cyber security experts see an uptick around Valentine’s Day.
A common scam on dating apps is when someone sends you a fraudulent link to another website intended to steal your personal information.
“In just the last two months, we’ve blocked about 321,000 odd URLs related to this,” said Abhishek Karnik, who’s the head of Threat Research and Intelligence at McAfee.
Another scam that’s happening right now is if you’re looking to send a Valentine’s Day treat like chocolates or flowers to a loved one, crooks are trying to trick you with fake websites.
“Fake websites or fake online shops which don’t actually deliver something,” said Karnik.
Of course, there are those romance scams where someone is trying to gain your trust to steal your money.
“If someone is trying to rush you into something, that’s a red flag,” said Karnik.
“Some of the red flags that you might think of when this happens are that the relationship moves really fast,” said Cliff Steinhauer, director of Information Security and Engagement at the National Cyber Security Alliance.
He stresses the importance of keeping conversations on the dating apps.
“Some scammers will often ask people to go to an encrypted messaging app… so that their communications are private and not seen by anyone. The dating apps have built-in protections and filtering that will look at certain words and phrases and say, hey, this might be a scam,” said Steinhauer.
There are multiple ways someone who’s trying to manipulate you through a dating site may try to steal your money.
“Maybe there’s a trip planned to come see you if it’s somebody who lives far away or like maybe they have a problem getting through customs and need financial help. Or they’ve been injured, and there’s some kind of medical bill that’s urgent,” said Steinhauer.
“If they ever start to talk about some kind of investment, usually in crypto, that maybe their friend or their adviser is having really good success with, and they’ve dabbled a little bit, and they’re showing you screenshots of money growing, and things like that, that’s a really, really common scam as well that can be tied to romance scams,” he added.
Cyber protection experts believe romance scams are getting more sophisticated with the use of artificial intelligence.
“We expect to see a lot more of this,” said Karnik.
A.I. can now help non-native speakers sound native, generate fake images, or even be used to trick people over video chats in more advanced scams.
“That could be anything from deepfake lives, which is, you know, you’re on a camera with me chatting over Zoom, but the image is not me; it's actually sort of a MOF of somebody else,” said Karnik.
To help you verify that who you’re talking to is real, check to see how long their profile has been active.
Also, try to find them on social media to see if they have any followers.
Lastly, do a reverse search of their images.
