Avoiding Deception : International Dating WARNING SIGNS

Online dating can lead to finding your true love, but if you aren’t careful, it can also lead to a heartbreak.

There are a lot of guys who have taken some degree of control over their lives and signed up for international dating. The problem is that while they can control whether or not they engage in it, they cannot control how other people, people with less than noble intentions, engage in it.

While a lot of people who are on free dating apps are on those apps to find love or at least give finding love a fair shot, other people are on apps to find something else. While many people legitimately want to get into a relationship, others just want to fake a relationship so they can squeeze a little something from another person.

The thing about mobile dating apps is that basically anyone can sign up for them -- people who want love and people who want to hook other people in and bleed them dry as much as they can.

Now, a lot of the people who fall for scams are not necessarily naive. Some people find themselves falling into the sunk-cost fallacy; they have put so much time and effort into courting a person that the thought that they may have wasted their time, and possibly their money, is just some computing for them. No amount of dating advice is going to stop people from being people.

It should also be noted that a person who falls for an online scam is hardly alone. Plenty of people have fallen for pretty bad scams. Maybe they got tricked by the infamous Nigerian Prince scam or maybe they’ve entered their credit card number into a website that they should not have.

It’s inconvenient to fall for a scam, to be the stone from which more blood can be squeezed. In fact, some people have had their lives ruined by one bad decision made on the internet. But there are a few signs for which to look in order to keep from falling victim to such scams.

1. Use a real platform.

One of the easiest ways to avoid being scammed is to use a legitimate platform. There are a lot of international dating sites out there and a lot of them are not exactly on the up and up. This is because basically anyone can start their own website and not everyone has the best of intentions.

Not every website on the internet is a legitimate dating website. Many of the scam websites will present themselves as legitimate, but they are not legitimate dating websites. But there are legitimate dating websites out there.

A quick search on the internet should provide answers to questions as to which websites are legitimate or not. Another great way to tell if a website is a legitimate service or not is by looking at the interface.

Many scam websites are out of date with many of them looking like they have not been updated since the year 2005 or so.

If the interface looks old, then chances are that the website itself is not the best nor is it the most reliable.

2. Surrender nothing.

When it comes to international dating scams, one of the main goals is to squeeze money out of a person. So if there’s no money to be squeezed, then there is no point in pursuing someone, not when someone else could be a more accessible source of misbegotten funds.

So if someone with whom you feel you have connected with starts asking you for money, it might be a good idea to withhold funds. After all, someone who only wants your money is going to ask for it at some point.

If they stop communicating with you, if they suddenly get cold and distant, all when you withhold funds, then chances are that those funds that you’ve withheld are the sole reason that they were feigning interest in you at all.

It may feel pretty terrible for someone to just cut off communication, but it is a lot better than being victimized by scammers. Also, when it comes to online dating, there are plenty of fish out in the sea.

3. Search the social.

If a person is on a dating app, then they are at least somewhat familiar with how the internet works. This means that they may use social media, which means that searching their name on the internet may possibly lead to their social media profiles.

Now, not everyone uses social media, but if a person has social media profiles, then that’s a good sign that they are real people and not a team of con artists looking to get to your bank account.

Keep in mind that some scam operations will create wholesale identities and even have social media profiles, and having a legitimate social media profile does not preclude someone from having no trouble scamming vulnerable men on any online dating app.

4. Reverse image search.

Dating profiles usually come with pictures. But having pictures does not mean that a profile is legitimate. After all, basically anyone can put a profile together and download pictures off the internet to put on that profile.

Now, a simple reverse image search on a profile picture can lead to similar pictures and to the source of the picture itself. If the picture is part of some model’s portfolio, then the chances that the profile is some type of dupe goes up significantly, and that’s a red flag that you should be avoiding.

5. Trust your gut.

At some point, a man is going to have to trust his gut and you may find yourself at this point. Human instinct is there for a reason. Sure, it can lead you astray, but instincts generally keep people out of trouble.

If your instincts are telling you that someone is not to be trusted, then listen to them. It is likely that your subconscious mind has noticed something that your conscious mind has not and is now nagging at you to take that information seriously.

Finding love with international dating comes with a lot of pitfalls. But the thing about those pitfalls is that they can be avoided if you know what to look for and how to avoid them.