Cherry Blossoms Official Blog

Don't send money to anyone you haven't met in person.

 Hi There Readers!

As you might know, the Cherry Blossoms team is pretty big on fun. We’re also pretty big on Online Safety. This is why our blogging team is posting a great article from http://www.scam-detectives.co.uk on detecting and avoiding some of the more common dating scams. They make some really good points-

Keep reading for some key points and a few of our own comments!

What is a Dating Scam?

Very similar to Advance Fee Fraud, dating scams are usually targetted at users of online dating sites. Usually the scammer will pose as an attractive woman living abroad but wanting to meet someone in your country with a view to marriage. This is perhaps the most insidious of all email scams as the fraudster knows quite a bit of information about you from your site profile, but knows above all that you are single and looking for romance. The scammer will take their time to befriend you and win your trust, using information that you give them in your email exchanges to tailor their “pitch” for money to your particular personality and find out exactly what “buttons” they can press to appeal best to your generosity. It may be:

• They need money urgently for a family member to have an operation
• They have run out of money until their next payday and need a “loan” to pay their bills
• They need a plane ticket to visit a dying parent before they pass away
• They desperately want to get to your country to meet you, but can’t afford the fare

Blossoms Bloggers Say: Ladies AND Gentlemen, keep an eye out for this! Scammers will target members of BOTH sexes, not just men OR women.

Key points to look out for

• Your new “friend” is very new to the site and logs in infrequently
• They try to very quickly move conversations away from the dating site to private email, telephone and Instant Messaging (This removes the risk of their activity being caught by site administrators)
• Their profile is badly written, with poor English despite them claiming to be of British nationality.
• Their photograph is of an implausibly good looking person, obviously taken professionally (It’s a model!)
• You receive an email outlining a well constructed reason why they need money from you

Blossoms Bloggers Say: Many of them will also claim to be American or Australian. Another thing to look for is their ad text may be fluent and well written, but the correspondences sent reflect very poor English skill.

Something we all agree on:

• Stop corresponding with the person immediately and report the contact to your dating site
• DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY no matter how plausible the story is, or how long you’ve been corresponding with the person. It’s a scam.
• Just in case the last point wasn’t clear – DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY!

The CB Staff works hard to remove scammers from our site and we appreciate any help from our members on keeping it a safe, fun and friendly place to meet people. You can read the whole article, as well as other informative articles here: http://www.scam-detectives.co.uk/dating.html

Aloha,

Blossoms Bloggers

Tags: blossoms, blossoms.com, dating safety, don't send money, international dating, Mail Order Brides, Online Dating, scams

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Cherry Blossoms Website, Dating Safety, Discussions and Discoveries, Filipina Brides, Mail Order Brides, Online Dating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.