Romance Scams on the Rise

Unfortunately, one of the biggest increases in scams is occurring when people are looking for companionship. According to KnowBe4.com, “a romance scam is where an attacker assumes a fake persona in order to communicate and make someone else fall in love with them, usually for monetary gain. The online digital world has made it much easier to accomplish and far vaster in its reach.” It’s estimated that up to a third of all identities on many dating sites are romance scammers!¹

Criminals often spend weeks or even months texting or calling their victims getting him/her to fall in love with them. Once accomplished, they’ll request money – often with the excuse they need it to leave a bad home life, start a business or have a great investment opportunity for their victim.

“Every day, tens of thousands of people are in unrequited love with a fake identity. Many victims have lost lots of money, sometimes everything… Love is a very strong motivator among the lonely,” states Roger Grimes with KnowBe4.

If you, or someone you know, is being asked to send money to someone you’re “dating”, but haven’t actually met in person, beware.

• Perform an internet search on the person’s name to determine if the person is really who they say they are.
• Search the internet for key romantic phrases from communication with them. This may turn up other instances of previous victims reporting similar experiences.
• Perform a “reverse image” search on their pictures to see if that photo really matches the name provided. You can do this through Google, Bing or a commercial service such as www.pimeyes.com.

Remember, the cost of true love should not be directly related to paying someone to spend time with you!

^{1 https://blog.knowbe4.com/hard-lessons-romance-scams}