Meeting online is a common way of starting a relationship, but online dating has special challenges that you need to understand in order to protect yourself. Sometimes people you meet over the internet aren't who they say they are.
If you meet someone online who turns out to be posing as someone else, you are being catfished. Catfishers often use pictures stolen from other people's social media accounts. They may mess with your heart by causing you to fall in love, or they may even try to con you out of money.
Be wary about believing what strangers tell you online. And if you do start a relationship, look for these 7 signs that you are being catfished.
A catfisher may not want to speak to you online because a voice can give clues to a person's identity. The person may have a heavy accent that reveals a different ethnicity or may not even be the gender you were told.
When a catfisher is using a picture of someone else, video chat will ruin the con. Catfishers will often have a variety of excuses for not using video chat. They may say that they cannot download the right program or that they don't have a working camera. Don't trust someone you aren't able to see or meet in person.
People who date online will almost always use some kind of social media. If the person you are talking to doesn't use some form of social media, be suspicious. Also, be leery of someone who has a social media account but has very few followers. You should be able to see normal relationships between friends and family members on something like Facebook, etc.
A catfisher will often convince you that you are experiencing instant love and will push your relationship to move quickly along, even when you haven't actually met in person. Guard your heart until you know for sure that the person is real.
If someone claims to be a native English speaker, you can expect the person to display a decent knowledge of grammar and language usage. Broken English, odd sentence structure and misused words are a sign that someone is only pretending to speak English as a first language. This is important because many people who catfish for money are communicating with you from another part of the world.
People who are catfishing will usually display enthusiasm for meeting in person but will then claim something went wrong when it was time to actually show up. The lie is often dramatic, having to do with a car accident, being called to another location for serious work problems, the death of a loved one, or some other terrible event.
You should never send money or give your credit card information to someone you met online. Catfishers may tell you that they need money for some specific circumstance that has gone wrong in their lives. They will tell you that they have money to pay you back but cannot access it right away.
Some catfishers are just people who are bored and want to play with a stranger's feelings for fun. Others are looking for money and gifts.
You can meet someone special online, but you should be very careful. Do not allow yourself to trust or develop feelings for someone you have not spent time with in person. And if you see any of these 7 signs, be especially cautious.
If you approach online dating with a level head, you can avoid becoming the victim of a catfisher.
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Comments (14)
Anyone who immediately asks you to move the communication offsite should be treated with suspicion. It's OK to video chat or talk on the phone after we have communicated here for a while, but not after the first message.
I agree. I remember one occasion on here where a lady asked for my email first up and I replied that it was a bit early to go offsite just yet. Next time I looked she was gone; obviously someone had reported her and she'd been kicked out.
Maybe it's because i ask too many questions.
I will give a picture if a man ask for it.
I will also meet them in a public place if requested.
Communication does not last long on CS. Next...
they all stinks!
Avoid any profile that has the word god in capitals.
Avoid profiles that claim distance doesn't matter, age doesn't matter.
Run from anyone using the phrase GOD fearing or God fearing in profiles or email.
Do not video chat in the nude.
Understand any photo you supply may someday be posted as someone else's profile photo.
Do not supply your very personal email address. Create a bogus gmail, or hotmail account and use that email address for your love letters to strangers.
Do not supply your true date of birth or home address unless you wish someone to impersonate you to a credit card company.
WhatsAp and Yahoo Messenger are better for first time video chats than a connection to your Facebook account..
If you give strangers your cell phone number you should expect lots of salesmen to soon start calling selling everything from condoms to old truck warranties.
Four out of every five folk you meet online will turn out to be total fakes.
In digital world or daily life, human lack of morality every day. It is not new or just available at all.
Thank you so much for caution.
It seems that there are more scammers on dating sites than there are fish in the sea.
As far as I'm concerned, when I'm asked for my email address after a couple of messages, let alone the first one - has happened - then I will assume I'm dealing with a scammer and report them.
Hint: 99.999% of "women" who contact first are scammers.
Thank you for the article.