As New Years’ Day fastly approaches, we are here to help you prepare your New Years’ resolutions. Many people wish for many things, such as healthier eating habits, more exercise, to achieve goals and more. However, at Social Catfish our New Years’ resolution for you guys is to help you avoid scammers for good. Because this has become a huge goal for us, we have prepared a list of the best online dating advice from 2020 for you to avoid scammers as 2021 quickly approaches.

Best Online Dating Advice of 2020

1. Trust your gut.

There are some scammers that will use fear or emotion to take your money away from you. Some will pretend to love you and only want the best for you so that you will be tricked out of your funds. Others will use fear and threaten jail time if you don’t provide them with money. If something doesn’t make sense let your gut take over your instincts instead of your emotions.

2. Run away if it’s too good to be true.

If a scammer is promising you more money in exchange for a small fee because they claim to love you, chances are it’s a scam. Scammers will use this to gain your personal information to commit identity theft and also to drain your bank account.

3. Don’t give anyone online your personal or financial information.

There is no reason as to why someone you are talking to online would need your sensitive information. If they are asking for personal or financial information, their intentions are not to get to know you more. The only reason why someone would want your information would be to steal your identity and your money.

4. Video chat or meet your online partner in person before getting in a serious relationship with them.

If you want reassurance that the person you are talking to online isn’t a catfish, then video chatting them or meeting them in person is the only way to go. With video chatting, you still need to be careful because it is possible that a scammer could fake a video chat. If this happens to you, look for repeating video loops, spotty connections, and whether or not their words match their lips.

5. Watch out for grammatical errors in their messages.

English isn’t the first language for many scammers that are trying to steal money from their victims. Because of this, there are bound to be many grammatical errors in their messages. If you notice that punctuation is spotty, words are misspelled, or they have an accent while talking to you on the phone, then these are all huge red flags that you are communicating with a scammer.

6. Look out for people with an overseas job or who are in the military

Scammers will use overseas jobs, such as the military or working on an oil rig, as an excuse as to why they can’t come and see you. They will also use this to come up with excuses as to why they can’t video chat with you, why they need money, or why they have an emergency all of a sudden. If you are talking to someone who has used their overseas careers as excuses, then there is a huge red flag you are talking to a scammer.

7. Watch out for heavily edited photos

If your online lover’s photos look heavily edited or blurry, this could be a sign that they aren’t real. Yes, they might have photos of them whenever you ask for them, but this is usually because they have stolen many photos from someone else’s social media profile.

If you ask for photo-proof of them in a certain situation that they are claiming, such as being stuck in the hospital, they can easily photoshop their fake persona’s face into another photo. Just because they are sending you photos DOES NOT mean that they are real. The only way to verify if someone is real is to video chat them or meet them in person.

8. Watch out for holes in your online lover’s story

Your online lover wants to come and see you, but can’t afford the plane ticket. So you give them money for a plane ticket, but right before the flight, a bus hits them. Now, a doctor is emailing you, insurance won’t cover their injuries, and now they need even more money for you to cover their hospital bills or they die. Sounds a bit extreme, don’t you think?

That’s because, with a story like this, all they want to do is provoke emotion and fear into you to get the money they want. If a story is over the top like this or has other holes in it, do not fall for what they are saying and keep your money to yourself.

9. Watch out if your online lover wants to move your relationship too fast

How can someone really determine that you’re the one with only a few weeks of talking? How can someone know that they can’t live without you if they have only known you for a month? If someone is making serious claims like this after only a small amount of time talking to you, then they have other intentions up their sleeves.

The purpose of moving an online relationship at a quick pace is to build up the victim’s trust at a faster level so that they can steal your money faster. Our best online dating advice for this would be to move your relationships slow and be wary if your online lover is using this trick on you.

10. Use Social Catfish’s Reverse Search to see if your online lover’s identity is real

At Social Catfish, we want to help you verify the identities of those who might seem suspicious to you. If you have their name, email address, phone number, social media username, or image, you can reverse search and see who the suspected person was that you’ve been in contact with and make sure to follow our best online dating advice of 2020. Also, make sure to check out our YouTube channel to view more signs of online relationship scams.

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