How to Identify a Scammer

Scammers are everywhere. They’re on dating apps, in email inboxes, and social media, ready to take advantage of unsuspecting users. If you’re going to use online dating sites, it’s essential to know how to identify a scammer before they take advantage of you. In this post, we’ll discuss what is a scam, the common scams you might encounter, and how to spot a scammer.

What is a Scam?

A scam is any action that deceives or misleads an individual or group of people to obtain money, property, or personal information. A scam can be as simple as a door-to-door salesperson trying to sell you something you don’t want or need, or it can be a complex fraudulent scheme that involves identity theft and financial loss.

How to Identify a Scammer?

Finding out whether or not someone is a scammer is simple. All you need to do is upload the person’s photos into the search bar below to run a search. This approach is effective, especially if you met the person online. This is because scammers steal influencers’ photos online to scam people. This will save you time and countless hours debating the truth of their claims in your head.

Common Types of Scams

To better understand scams, here are some common scams you might have encountered.

Internet Scams Increase by 80% in 2021

Internet scams are an increasingly serious problem. People are losing money at an alarming rate. Overall, the amount of losses due to internet scams has increased to $1 billion last year. That is an 80% increase in just 365 days! This large increase in losses is due to a few factors, but the most important takeaway is that internet scams are a serious problem, and you should be very vigilant when interacting with anyone online.

Many of the scammers are overseas. Scammers hide their identity online by stealing the images of influencers on Instagram and fabricating stories to go along with the picture they post. They then post them on their fake accounts and even send them to you. This is called ‘catfishing’.

Catfish scammers attempt to get your money in a variety of ways. One of the ways is a romance scam. A romance scam is what is called a ‘mass messaging scam’. This is because scammers send messages to thousands of people, hoping that a couple of them respond. Once they get a response. The scam takes them on an emotional roller coaster and extracts dollars out of them every step of the way. This is just one of the scams that having the ability to verify identities will help you avoid.

Phishing Scams

There’s a technique scammers use to steal your account information, and the most heinous part is, that they don’t need to take it from you because they get you to give it to them. This is what is known as a phishing scam. One of the reasons it is important to know how to identify someone online is because it is a common practice for scammers to disguise themselves as a big business like Amazon and get you to hand over your account info.

Investment Scams

Investment scams are another common scam online. Investment scams often involve identity theft in the form of hacking into real accounts and telling the person’s followers to invest money with the scammer’s ‘business’. Although this is the most common type of investment scam, cash flip scams are another scammer favorite. Not to mention fake gurus, pyramid schemes, and more.

Now that we’ve taken a look at the type of scams out there, let’s take a second to go over the ways of spotting a scammer.

Top Tips on How to Identify a Scammer

Now that you know scammer’s favorite types of scams, it’s important to know how to identify the signs that someone is a scammer. Here are the top signs to watch out for.

1.) They move you to a new platform

When you meet someone on a dating site, social media, or an online game, and they immediately try to get you to move the conversation to a secure messaging app like Google Hangouts or Whatsapp, this is a massive red flag. They do this because they are trying to avoid having their catfish account taken down. If you met someone and they moved you to a messaging app, look out!

2.) Their communication style seems a little off

Online, not everyone spells things correctly all the time. People tend not to use proper grammar and punctuation, but one of the ways to identify a scammer is to watch out for these things occurring more often than usual. If you’re noticing many misspelled words and grammatical errors in their messages, this is another massive red flag. As mentioned above, many scammers are living in foreign countries, and because of this, English is often not their first language. So if they claim to be from the states or another English-speaking country, read their messages aloud, and if you can’t picture someone you know from your everyday life speaking in this way, you can identify them as a scammer.

3.) Many Images and profiles come up after running a reverse image search

Since scammers steal pictures to create fake narratives, there are many accounts using the same images. If you run a reverse image search on their images and there are multiple exact matches, it is safe to identify that person as a scammer. Running a reverse image search is easy. Simply upload an image into the search bar below.

4.) The person is too good to be true

Since scammer’s personas are completely fabricated, they often come across as flawless individuals. If they look like a model, have the perfect profession, and say the most romantic things at the perfect times, although it can be tough to acknowledge, this is another, massive red flag.

5.) They’re vague about their business and services

If someone won’t tell you what they do or how they can help you, that’s usually a sign that something is fishy. Be wary of people who refuse to give specifics about themselves and their company unless you ask directly.

6.) They give you dramatic stories as an explanation for why they need you to do something

Scammers use different stories to convince you to give them what they want. Some of these stories may even be ridiculous. For instance, the person might say they’re stuck in another country and need help getting out of it or that they need money because they’ve been robbed. This is one of the most common tactics that scammers use to deceive people. Never send any money to someone who makes these claims.

7. ) They make promises they can’t keep

Scammers want you to trust them so much that they’ll say anything just to get your money or information — even if they can’t deliver on those promises in the first place! Be wary of people claiming that they can do something impossible (like making millions overnight).

8.) They use images of celebrities and famous people

Scammers don’t use legitimate accounts with their real pictures. They create fake profiles and use the stolen pictures of celebrities like movie stars, models, etc., in a bid to look appealing. Also, scammers have few pictures on their profiles, most of which may not be recent. 

If you suspect someone is using stolen pictures, carrying out a reverse image search can help you ascertain the original source of the images. This way, you can tell where the images were picked from and identify a scammer.

Final thoughts

You can never know for sure if someone is who they say they are until you see their face in person.