7 Signs You're Being Catfished

7 Signs Youre Being Catfished

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.

The person doesn't want to talk on the phone.

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.

The person won't video chat with you.

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.

The person doesn't have a normal presence on social media.

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.

The person gets too close too fast.

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.

The person has poor language skills.

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.

Something always goes wrong when you plan to meet.

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.

The person asks for money.

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.

Comments (14)

I disagree with #1, at least at the beginning. You will likely end up on a spam list and get calls from telemarketers or scammers if you give a bunch of strangers your phone number. Even legitimate people might call you so often that it becomes annoying. I already get so many calls that I have to block anything from numbers I don't recognize.

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.
Paul2795
"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."

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.
William5302
The sad thing is the ad's on this site that are notorious for scammers,bot's,etc. I understand that they get paid every time someone clicks their button. Just google some of these and read the comments. Also,Vidio chat is easy,I have 3 different ones on my phone. It is not hard to remember how to defuse these people. Just use your commen SENCE . Yes,born here,raised here in USA and I still misspel some words..I do NOT use any social media sites,as years ago tried to,in box loaded every day from people I did not know,and there are scammers on them also..Have a nice day and good luck!
hicham2019
not everyone simply come from other country and they don t post photos mean that they are catfish or a scammers if their english broken i won t post my photos here for reason we all know it can be used by another person that has bad intention to scamm others or cause others problem i also doubt about if we change the persoanl details like phone or instant messengers all can use fake webcam and deceieve you i don t know many profile was created on the websites has photos of women most of them are united states may be eaurop i dont wish to meet liars on this site my profile is genuine morocco location real ip adress not vpn that might other use to deceive the website i don t know if this website can deal with vpn and fishing ip address if they keep that mean they help and encourage scammer to commit more harm to the others which is not good things for real and geniune people that care for friendship and love etc i wish to not meet this kind of bad people
William5302
Had lady today ,picture showed a black, profile said white..that was a dummy mistake..
LaFonda
I have not dealt with scammer before.
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...laugh
whitelily1
whaaaa... i found so many catfish in here with different species but from the same familiae.
they all stinks!
barf
NOSTRUS
Stolen pictures ......some look too young for stated age ... one I read said black hair black eyes and picture had blond hair blue eyes ... he obviously got mixed up.They often say they have Masters degree ( a bachelors diesnt cut it ) and huge salary€150,000 to hook you in( they assume we're all money grubbers ) .. Do really successful high achievers need to be on free site like this? The Fact this site is free makes it prime place to practise their deception .......if you have to pay for a site there will be less scammers ... ...but this site offers stuff other than dating . I've blocked whole continent to stop the daily onslaught it's an insult to my intelligence guys saying they have a degree who can't spell most basic English and I do allow for typing errors.....If a guy writes "sence" for "sense " in my experience your dealing with a not very bright person which is ok if you can put up with stupidity narrowmindness and all that goes with it .I 've tried to ,it doesn't work . Stay at your own level don't sink low or aim too high . Your equal is what's best in a "normal" relationship ....whatever that might be !!!! ::::rolleyes:
Ken_19
Always run from emails that begin with dearest, or beloved.

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.

professor
Black_Swan71
If you replay to someone from other country(usualy USA) to be sure that you text with the real person need to ask video chat on the whatsapp or viber to see the number and the face and if the person said that has broken web camera so it's mean that is a scammer on 100%. Usualy they want your email to send you pics and write you. For God sake who in the 21 century doesn't have laptop or smarthphone with web camera. Ppl don waste your time with stupid scammers! Just delete the message immediately if they ask your email.
LovingAAA
Men or Women have the right to do scammers, haven't they?
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.
somethinew
Yes, there are a lot of scams being played on this site, now it's time to ask for a ID card, or Drivers License matching their picture on the site! Here are a bunch of female/ male's who know that are using other people's pictures,. (numbers removed), and they all claim there phones are bad? And, they can't call you it's because they are roaming their calls from other places in the World,....dancing
Java4Joe
Another point you could add is that scammers tend to copy and paste romance letters from online, because they obviously do not feel it is worth the time to write their own words.. I just exposed one from this site 3 days ago doing just that. (Some of the phrases included "I love the way you walk", which this person could not possibly know, as we are both online).
lightbulb
Car54
Nicely written and spot on.
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.

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