Catfish Online Dating
February 24, 2014
Today, social media is used for many reasons including forming romance relationships. According to Doctor Phil, more than 40 million individuals look for love online. As a result, many people are at risk of being victims of a scam. The most common scam among online dating is “catfish”. A “catfish” is an individual who creates a fabricated identity, to persuade others into building a romantic relationship, knowing that it would never work out because of deception. A “catfish” is usually found in social media sites and online dating sites. So, how do you know when you’re a victim of a “catfish”? Listed below are tips that can help identify a “catfish”.
To begin, a “catfish” is usually a complete stranger that initiates contact with you. Typically, a “catfish” sends you a message, friend request, or anything else to try and communicate with you. In addition, when trying to identify them it is often troublesome. For instance, they may not have an active Facebook account or they do have an active Facebook account, but with a false image and/or no mutual friends.
Next, a “catfish” is usually someone attractive or someone who claims to be a model. Logically, one would assume if you are not a model, photographer, or model agent why would someone like this contact you? Normally a model receives publicity from a vast audience, so why would they have the need to reach out to random people? Hence, this should signal a red flag.
Another way to identify a “catfish” is if they constantly make up foolish, obvious lies. For example, every time you request a video chat or a picture they make up excuses explaining why they can’t. Generally speaking, mostly every individual has an accessible picture of himself or herself. In addition, most technological devices have internal web cameras that allow you to chat anywhere. Therefore, there is no proper justification in why he/she cannot provide an accurate image or web cam chat.
These are just a few of many ways in identifying a “catfish”. Hopefully this will help individuals or victims in similar vulnerable situations.