What is up with the foreigners pretending to be local/American on dating websites? (women, love)
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I've spend some time on Yahoo, Match and Eharmony. Approximately 80% of the "men" I heard from on yahoo and match were foreigners pretending to be in my city. On eharmony it was more like 40%. At first it took me a while to figure out but now I can usually see it on first contact. Their profile paragraphs are strangely pasted together with capitals and punctuation in the wrong place, their use of English is awkward (i.e. some guy described himself as "svelte" probably thinking it was exactly the same as saying he's thin), their photos are of good-looking guys that appear to be from advertisements, they are usually widowed (because that's better than divorced, I suppose??), they immediately claim their love and devotion, and soon explain that they're with a traveling soccer team or some-such in a foreign country but will be "home" soon...
Now, in order for these people to contact members (as opposed to "winks" or "icebreakers" or whatever), they have to actually pay for the service. I'm not clear on why this is worth it. If out of every 100 women they contact, they hit one who is inexperienced enough to fall for this (like those women who've been on Oprah, Dateline, etc), maybe will send him money so he can supposedly "come visit" or whatever the arrangement might be, is that the game? It just doesn't seem that they'd find enough women to fall for it to make it worth the initial cost and time spent.
Isn't Yahoo! dating free? That may be why the number is so high. For the other sites, you'd be surprised at how gullible some people still are to scams, especially when their emotions are worn thin due to dating fatigue. If a scammer posts an profile and get one genuinely interested hit, it's worth the investment.
Isn't Yahoo! dating free? That may be why the number is so high. For the other sites, you'd be surprised at how gullible some people still are to scams, especially when their emotions are worn thin due to dating fatigue. If a scammer posts an profile and get one genuinely interested hit, it's worth the investment.
Yahoo isn't free to do anything more than send a meaningless icebreaker.
I've spend some time on Yahoo, Match and Eharmony. Approximately 80% of the "men" I heard from on yahoo and match were foreigners pretending to be in my city. On eharmony it was more like 40%. At first it took me a while to figure out but now I can usually see it on first contact. Their profile paragraphs are strangely pasted together with capitals and punctuation in the wrong place, their use of English is awkward (i.e. some guy described himself as "svelte" probably thinking it was exactly the same as saying he's thin), their photos are of good-looking guys that appear to be from advertisements, they are usually widowed (because that's better than divorced, I suppose??), they immediately claim their love and devotion, and soon explain that they're with a traveling soccer team or some-such in a foreign country but will be "home" soon...
Now, in order for these people to contact members (as opposed to "winks" or "icebreakers" or whatever), they have to actually pay for the service. I'm not clear on why this is worth it. If out of every 100 women they contact, they hit one who is inexperienced enough to fall for this (like those women who've been on Oprah, Dateline, etc), maybe will send him money so he can supposedly "come visit" or whatever the arrangement might be, is that the game? It just doesn't seem that they'd find enough women to fall for it to make it worth the initial cost and time spent.
That seems to be the direction that the "419" scammers are taking......
It can actually be worse. The women/men who fall for this not only happen to send some money by mistake, they also become part of their criminal activity.
It's part and parcel of money laundering.
The victim does not realize unless law enforcement officials show up at the door and the victim is in a hell load of trouble. And the scammers disappear because they are adept at erasing their trails.
These criminals are based mostly in Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. The dating websites don't invest much on information security like banks do and they are the easiest and the happiest hunting ground.
I had a friend who had a profile on cupid and an extremely handsome and younger man who claimed to be from London contacted her and told her he was coming to the states shortly after writing her. she was very excited until he called and told her that something went wrong with his credit card and he was stuck en route and would need her to help him out with her credit card number. Of course she didn't do it, but it made me wonder about some of the very good looking men who contacted me from London--way better looking than anyone who contacted me from my city, and I just never did trust that. One guy was so incoherent that I couldn't tell if he was drunk or a foreigner, and he was an engineer--a lot of them seem to choose that as their career.
I've spend some time on Yahoo, Match and Eharmony. Approximately 80% of the "men" I heard from on yahoo and match were foreigners pretending to be in my city. On eharmony it was more like 40%.
I've been using Match, on and off, for over 4 years now. I have come across probably 5 or 6 of those profiles in that time. I have a hard time believing your percentages based on my own experiences.
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