With the development of the internet and social networks, online dating has become a popular way to find new friends or even your soulmate. However, along with the growth in popularity of web dating, the number of scammers who use dating platforms to deceive gullible users is also increasing. In addition, scammers are constantly refining and evolving their schemes in order to look more natural, ingratiate themselves more convincingly and make more personal gains.
We’d like to share some important signs that you’re probably communicating with a scammer, and also tell you how you can avoid it. We are sure this information will be useful for anyone who meets people online.
How to understand that you’re talking to a scammer
There are several main signs that you’re dealing with a scammer. If you are communicating with a person online and notice one or more of these signs, there’s a high likelihood that you’d be best to stop chatting with this person as soon as possible to avoid falling for their tricks.
- Sign #1. Suspicious profile
One of the first signs of fraud is a suspicious user profile. Usually, such profiles have few photos or the photos look too perfect — like professional models. Most often, these images are stolen from the internet and belong to other people. If your chat partner claims to live in another country, but is actively looking for dates in your region, this can also be suspicious. In this way, scammers try to avoid meeting in real life, which makes it easier for them to manipulate people.
- Sign #2. Attempts to move communication to another platform
Another common technique used by scammers is to try to quickly transfer communication to another platform. This could be email, instant messenger or a social network, where it’s easier for scammers to hide their tracks and avoid moderation from the dating platform. If a new person you meet suggests too persistently that you move to another platform for communication, you should be wary. Especially if it’s a site or service you’ve never heard of before.
- Sign #3. Too quick expression of feelings and confession of love
Fraudsters often use so-called “quick approach” tactics. After just a few days of chat, they may start confessing their love, talking about marriage and plans for a future together. Their goal is to create emotional attachment and trust in you, and then use it for their own selfish purposes. Real relationships develop gradually, and overly quick confessions should raise red flags.
- Sign #4. Finding reasons not to meet in real life
Fraudsters constantly find excuses to avoid meeting you offline. These could be sudden business trips, family circumstances, illnesses — anything. They will, of course, promise to meet you “next time”, but you need to understand that this next time will never happen. Constant excuses are a sure sign that your chat partner is hiding something and misleading you.
- Sign #5: Unwillingness to communicate via video chat
The vast majority of online scammers hide their faces so that you cannot identify them, and capture a photo or video of your conversation. This is a high risk for them, so they refuse to not only meet in real life, but also chat via webcam. If your chat partner constantly finds new reasons not to communicate with you in videochat, they are probably not who they claim to be.
- Sign #6. Requests for financial help
Perhaps the main sign of a web dating scam is a request for financial help. As a rule, they will try to gradually drive you towards this stage with confessions of love, plans for a joint vacation and a happy family life. And when you’re on the hook, the scammer will start asking for money under one pretext or another. Pretexts can be very different — for medical treatment, for buying an air ticket, for urgent loan repayment, and so on. The chat partner will demand pity and appeal to your feelings. Don’t trust this! Never transfer money to strangers, even if it seems you have a strong emotional connection and trusting relationship has formed between you. This is an illusion and a deception.
Bazoocam video chat — an opportunity to minimize risks
As we said above, scammers avoid random chat in every possible way. You can stay ahead of the curve and significantly reduce your risks if you initially date people on video platforms. For example, in Bazoocam chat roulette. This is a popular chat roulette that connects you via video with random users and gives you the opportunity to communicate as in real life. In this way, the risks of facing scammers are significantly reduced, although they are not eliminated 100%. This should also be kept in mind.
Of course, Bazoocam is not the only popular cam chat app. You could also try other services:
- CooMeet — a great alternative to Bazoo Cam for men who want to meet just girls. The platform uses a top quality gender filter that does not make mistakes in selecting chat partners. This saves a lot of time and effort.
- OmeTV — another popular video chat app that offers users gender and geographic filters for more accurate selection of chat partners. Selection is not as accurate as in CooMeet, but overall it is not bad.
- Azar — a combination of random chat and a video streaming service. Here you can not just communicate with new people one-on-one, but also broadcast streams to a larger audience. Or watch the broadcasts of other platform participants.
- Chatpad — a popular videochat app in Japan, which has recently become increasingly popular in other countries around the world. This is definitely a great prospective platform for dating and communicating with new people.
- PalTalk — a functional alternative to Bazoocam that is in many ways similar to a messenger, with the ability to communicate with many people, save communication history, add users to contacts and much more.
- LivU — a convenient webcam chat app with basic functionality, as well as a huge set of filters and video masks that help diversify communication and add bright colors. Of course, there’s also a gender filter.
- Chatspin — a chat roulette app with a gender filter and AI masks, using which you can hide your face from your chat partner for greater anonymity, or just show your creativity.
The choice out there is really impressive, and all of the listed platforms work on the same principle as Bazoocam. You go to the platform, start a video chat and in just a moment you’ll meet a new person, see and hear them. You’ll love it!
Stay vigilant online
Unfortunately, despite all the efforts of developers and moderators, it’s impossible to completely eradicate online fraud. Your task is to stay vigilant and not be too trusting of people. Especially if their behavior and actions fall under the signs of fraud listed above.
Of course, in some cases, even genuine users may partly demonstrate these characteristics. Some people are really shy about video chatting with people they don’t know well, and they need time to prepare. And some people just don’t feel comfortable communicating on a dating site and want to switch to a messenger, for example. It happens. But you must assess every situation soberly, trust your intuition and act accordingly. We’re confident you can handle it.