Fake Profiles On Facebook Dating
By Jessica Huhn for DateAha! The garden of online dating is filled with weeds — totally fake profiles. Around 10% of online dating profiles are fakes — catfishers and scammers who want to. There are thousands of fake profiles on all Dating sites and Apps. It’s quite difficult to do something against them, but it is very possible to spot and even report them. But if they get kicked out by the site, they promptly come back with new login.
Aug. 26, 2011— -- 'She was smoking hot, unbelievably sexy ... super beautiful.' This was how Nev Schulman, a 24-year-old photographer, described Megan, a fellow artist who became friendly with him on Facebook in 2007.
An online courtship began, and Schulman's filmmaking friends documented his excitement. Not until Schulman knocked on Megan's door months later did he discover that his love interest looked nothing like her profile photo. 'Megan' was actually Angela, a 40-something wife and mother of two who later said she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Schulman and his friends made a high-profile film, 'Catfish,' out of being duped by a false Facebook profile. Other cases have had more tragic endings.
In 2006, co-workers Thomas Montgomery and Brian Barrett became so entangled in an online love triangle with a young woman who identified herself as 'talhotblond' that Thomas eventually murdered Barrett at their office. Neither man realized that they were fighting over an overweight, middle-aged, stay-at-home mom.
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So before falling hard for an online-only acquaintance, here are a few tips, gleaned from 'Catfish,' to help you detect fraudulent profiles on social networking and dating sites.
1. The perfect person is not a real person. A supermodel or retouched profile photo should raise the first red flag.
2. Be wary if the profile describes a personality that complements your own or is too good to be true. Often, imposters will create interests and activities that mirror your own in order to start a conversation.
3. Check how many friends and followers are listed in the person's network. The average Facebook user has 130 friends. An imposter will often have significantly fewer.
4. Determine whether any of your 'mutual friends' have actually met your newest online acquaintance in person.
5. Use search engines to do a quick background check on the name and basic information used in a profile. If the profile claims the person attended Oxford, currently works as a CEO at an international company or runs marathons, you should be able to find mentions of these achievements on alumni, company or running sites, respectively. Schulman admitted that Googling Megan earlier in their relationship could have saved him a great deal of embarrassment and heartbreak.
6. Peruse posted pictures and albums carefully. A real person will often have pictures with friends and family, who will have tagged and commented on photos. By contrast, imposters will often use modeling photos featuring only glamorous shots of the individual rather than group photos.
7. Don't be tricked if your friend has multiple people who vouch for him or her online. One person can easily make multiple accounts to make it appear as if there is a support network of family and friends.
8. Imposters will often try to interact with your own friends and family members to create a broader sense of familiarity and build up a broader network of trust.
9. Finally, if you've been harmed by someone who posted a fake profile, report it to site monitors and authorities. Although it may be humiliating to be duped online, authorities will be able to identify imposters and close their accounts more quickly than you working independently.
Imagine this scenario. You’re browsing on Facebook and one of your friends sends you a message querying why you just sent them a friend request.
You never sent such a request, and upon an investigation, it turns out someone unbeknown to you has created an account that appears identical to yours. Same name, same profile picture. Same information.
And this fake Facebook account is sending friend requests to all your friends.
It’s called Facebook cloning. And despite the crook creating a duplicate account under your name, it’s actually your friends that are the target of this scam, not you.
The aim of the criminal is to trick your friends into accepting a friend request from the cloned account they created while thinking it’s you. Once that friend request is accepted, the crook has access to the innards of your friends Facebook accounts including their personal information.
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From there, any number of social engineering scams can take place. For example, the crook can lure your friends into clicking links, giving up sensitive information or even handing over money, the whole time tricking your friends into thinking they’re communicating with you.
Facebook cloning scams are extremely popular over social media, primarily because they require little technical know-how since the crook merely has to create a Facebook account with your profile picture and name and then send friend requests. As such, almost anyone could orchestrate such a scam.
Fortunately you can stop crooks in their tracks. By hiding your Facebook friends list. Without knowing who you’re friends with on Facebook, the crooks don’t know who to send friend requests to.
To hide your friends list, head to Facebook’s website (not using the app) and head to your profile and click Friends. Then click the pencil icon and Manage Privacy and there you will see the Who can see your friends list? option. Make sure public is NOT selected. Instead select Friends or better yet Only Me.
Fake Profiles On Facebook Dating
If you believe you’re already the target of a cloning scam, first report the profile by going to the offending profile page and clicking the Report option. Then warn all your friends not to interact or accept a friend request from any other accounts that appear to be yours.