What is a dating scam?

On a dating website, a scammer is someone who builds a relationship with you, pretending to be a legitimate user of a dating website then uses fraudulent claims to defraud you. Scammers will ask you for money, personal or financial information or try to redirect you to websites that require payment or download malicious software onto your computer.

Scams of this sort can be very sophisticated and scammers will go to great lengths to build a relationship with you, spending a lot of time communicating with you and perhaps even telling you they love you and sending you gifts.

The key rule is that you should never send money to anyone you meet online and should reconsider your relationship with anyone who asks you for money or who you otherwise suspect may be a scammer.

Scammers will often ask you to send money via a wire transfer service – you will usually be unable to recover money sent this way. You should also never share personal information, such as bank account or credit card details as you risk falling victim to fraud and identity theft.

How can I spot a scammer?

Any of the following behaviour should raise concerns that the person you are interacting with is a scammer:

• they ask you to send them money or provide your personal or financial details
• they ask you to transfer money via a wire transfer service
• they quickly profess strong feelings or love for you, or promise you sex or other intimate relationships
• they are vague about their interests, or what they want in a partner
• they do not answer your questions or their responses are formulaic, nonsensical or repetitive
• they claim to be stationed in or travel frequently to Africa or elsewhere overseas
• they claim to be of mixed African and US, Australian, European or Canadian descent and travel to meet relatives in Africa
• their profile, or their communications with you display poor spelling or grammar
• they may be eager to get you to communicate with them away from the RedHotPie website

You should carefully consider your relationship with anyone who asks you to move communications with them away from the dating website onto email, instant messaging, the phone, voice over IP or some other medium after only a few contacts. Scammers will often ask you to do this so that you will be communicating only with them, are more likely to reveal personal information and will not receive safety warnings.

You should never respond to a request for money, personal information or banking details, no matter the reason given.

Other scammers may ask you to send an email or add them to your chat client (eg - MSN Messenger) which then results in receiving spam containing links to other websites or attachments that often contain viruses or malware. Do not click on any unverified links or attachments.

You should also avoid calling or texting phone numbers a user gives you that begins with 19XX. Calling this number will only cost you money and the person on the other end is not likely to be genuine. You should also never respond to SMS originating from 19XXXXX numbers even if the sender says he/she is a member from RedHotPie. They are generally associated with Premium SMS services which may cost to reply.

If you are suspicious about any members on RedHotPie then report them by clicking on the Abuse Report link that appears in the message they sent you.

Want to learn more?

You can find a lot more information about scams at SCAMWatch.

SCAMwatch is a website owned and maintained by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and provides a wealth of useful information on this topic.

http://www.scamwatch.gov.au