Romance scams are on the rise and Valentine's Day is just one example of when these scams can increase significantly. The reality is scammers are constantly looking for real connections and abuse the currency of trust. Reports from around the world show a similar trend in the rise of love scams resulting in the loss of millions of dollars.
The Federal Trade Commission reports that individuals have lost a staggering $1,3 billion to love scams in the last five years. There is some positive news as the National Police arrested 16 suspected cybercriminals, 15 of them in Palma, in one of the largest operations of its kind in the European Union, who had set up an organization in Spain to run the online scam known as the "love scam". . According to the police, the group cheated people across Europe out of millions of euros.
Tenable, the exposure management company, has warned that dating apps are a prime target for scammers looking to prey on vulnerable people in search of romance. Scammers use stolen photos to create fake profiles and impersonate someone else. Once connected, they can promote get-rich-quick schemes, particularly cryptocurrency investment scams, to lure unsuspecting users to fake investment websites to scam funds.
Fraud in pig slaughter
One of the latest schemes making headlines is "pig butchering", which targets individuals through various messaging services, social networks and dating apps through text messages with fake numbers and fake dating prospects. Pig Butchering derives romance and cryptocurrency scam tactics based on deceiving victims of money by winning their trust with promises of a real relationship. Scammers then exploit this trust by luring their victims into an investment program, typically cryptocurrency but also forex or precious metals like gold - similar to feeding a pig before it is slaughtered.
Adult Dating Sites
Scammers also create fake profiles on dating apps to lure potential victims to external adult dating websites. Often staffed with fake users, these websites use affiliate programs to drive traffic. As a result, scammers abuse the affiliate programs to instruct victims to create accounts with valid email addresses on these websites, earning them a modest profit of between US$2,00 and US$4,00. The holy grail is a premium lead where a victim enters their credit card information into these websites, which allows a scammer to earn anywhere from $50-$100 per sign-up.
ChatGPT simplifies cheating
Poorly constructed sentences or grammatical errors are one of the few telltale signs of phishing emails and datingpp profiles. With the proliferation of “pig slaughter scams”, ChatGPT could help scammers by helping them create more credible profiles. This technology can also be used to facilitate scripts used by dating and romance scammers when trying to convince their potential victims to part with their money or cryptocurrency. "It's becoming increasingly important for dating app users to remain skeptical, especially when asked to join a cryptocurrency get-rich-quick program or send money to someone you barely know," said Satnam Narang, Sr. Research Associate, Tenable.
“Scammers play on people's vulnerabilities and need for connection. When someone on a dating app tries to get you to invest money in something, that's a big red flag. Always play it safe and use the reporting tool built into dating apps to report potential fake profiles and scammers.”
What can users do?
- If users come across a suspicious account, they should use the dating apps' built-in reporting tool to flag those profiles so providers can remove them as soon as possible.
- Never give money to people on dating sites, no matter how desperate they say they need it.
- If you are prompted or pressured by a potential dating prospect to participate in an investment opportunity such as cryptocurrency or forex, realize you are being scammed and report the account and/or ban the user.
- Take screenshots of photos from Tinder profiles, then drag and drop them into reverse image search tools like Google Image Search or Tineye to see if they're from an existing source. Scammers love to steal images from various websites.
About Tenable Tenable is a Cyber Exposure company. Over 24.000 companies worldwide trust Tenable to understand and reduce cyber risk. Nessus inventors have combined their vulnerability expertise in Tenable.io, delivering the industry's first platform that provides real-time visibility into and secures any asset on any computing platform. Tenable's customer base includes 53 percent of the Fortune 500, 29 percent of the Global 2000, and large government agencies.