US report details extent of 'devastating' dating-app scams(theguardian.com) |
US report details extent of 'devastating' dating-app scams(theguardian.com) |
But they conveniently forgot to mention now it is a ghost town with sooooooo many bots and scam accounts and, like in the local case, many of the actual human accounts are just selling so-called "content".
Also, anyone who acts too interested in me would be an instant red flag.
Sunk cost "fallacy" helps the scammer a lot.
They start with a trivial amount and build from there. Each time, it's emotionally harder for the victim to accept the romance they built in their minds does not exist, AND the money they paid was not spent on a good cause.
It's much easier to deceive a person when their subconscious is collaborating with the scammer.
Many people on dating apps are so lonely that anyone who can pretend to be interested, friendly can easily manipulate a lonely person into falling for them. Basically, the scammers are using the same techniques that con-men use to fleece their marks.
I got so many bots and romance-scammers that I quit all dating apps years ago.
Some are blackmail emails that pretend they saw me doing something nasty through my webcam. I don't have a webcam.
I also have several email addresses that I do not use. Identical scams will come through more than one of those addresses at the same time.
I hover over the response link, and it's to some bizarro domain.
> In total, Mary said she sent the man about $100,000 in cryptocurrency payments. After realizing he was a scammer, she blocked his number. He would then switch phone numbers and contact her again.
If this works anything like a real-world scenario, the scammer would connect with the mark in the app and I could only imagine it would seem perfectly benign to the app. The scammer and mark would connect off-app and then the scam would continue and get deeper.
I haven't used dating apps in 2.5y, but when I did, it was already incredibly annoying to get logged in due to the barriers they had in place (phone, social accounts, etc). At what line does an organization's responsibility end and a person's own personal responsibility begin?
I don't recall having any spam or scammers interact with me when I used them, but I have the wherewithal to detect when something is scammy. This is happening all over the Internet (LinkedIn / SMS / Email scam jobs). If anything, perhaps Congress should be working on ways to educate the public through PSAs that aren't political pieces attempting to shore up a failing leader and instead shore up the public's ability to learn how to stop the scams from swindling them out of a ridiculous amount of money.
I feel for this person, I truly do....but....seriously!?
Maybe the least-bad solution would be a low, gov't-mandated level of effort, combined with blunt disclosures of what that did, and didn't cover?
For example, the "hang up, look up, call back" rule (or analogous rules if you are texted/emailed) is simple to remember and prevents the vast, vast majority of cases where a scammer is contacting you while pretending to be someone else (your bank, the IRS, etc.) While that wouldn't prevent this particular dating scam, there are other simple rules that could prevent these scams.
Scammers take advantage of human social instincts that developed over millennia and were based on face-to-face contacts. That's no longer viable in a remote contact world, so people need to be educated specifically on how to curb their natural instincts.
I'm sure someone smarter than me could poke holes in the above idea, or make it better, but look at the state of things now. We hand over all sorts of sensitive data to private companies, who have fundamentally misaligned incentives. I would think some sort of non profit app would have to be better.
They also hide the people you find most attractive behind a paywall
There are so many dark patterns in for-profit dating apps, it's the app equivalent of a funhouse mirror.
For one, something like 75-90% of the profiles are dormant/inactive, but they're still shown as active profiles to give current users the illusion that there are lots of options in your area. Second, a successful dating app experience (assuming they're looking for something serious), means the user churns, so the app company is financially incentivized NOT to put you in front of people that you would likely connect with, at least without trying to extract as much money from you at first. Finally, the paid accounts have gotten ridiculously expensive, which drives real users away from the platform. And of course, they don't have to be transparent about any of it.
A non-profit app has much less incentive to (frankly steal) from their users because they're able to offer the service at a lower cost, without the need for the funhouse mirror BS, and could even provide meaningful aggregate community data on how many couples they've connected, etc.
Now I'm wondering, if one created a brand new dating app marketed "WE ARE NOT OWNED BY MATCH GROUP", would it make bank?
And then Match bought OKCupid.