Anna Alden-Tirrill loves to write about Nigerian scam artists. So much so that she wrote a book called Cyber Love’s Illusions.
You will be moved by the victims’ stories of heartbreak, despair and healing. You will learn what you can do if you think you have already been scammed, and how to connect with other scam victims to get needed emotional support.
Not all Internet Dating Sites are a safe haven from these clever and conniving Scammers. This book will show you which Dating Sites are proactive in dealing with Scammers and which ones leave their members vulnerable to Scam Attacks. Discover the sites the authors place on their Blacklist and which sites reside in the SCAM-FREE ZONE!
Anna has a couple of blogs about her research and case studies. Why she decided to kill thousands of trees to print a 350-page book instead of making it a PDF drives me crazy. Especially when it comes to “The Black List.” That really should be an advertising-supported forum. Oh wait, there is one. Difficult to tell how useful it is.
Lot’s of slamming True.com (shocker!) and a few other sites I’ve never heard of. Save yourself the money and talk to friends about what you’re about to do before you go wire $5,000 to a model in the Ukraine. Most people will look at you incredulously and slap you on the back of the head hoping knock some sense into you.
Dating sites tend to focus on dating safety and shy away from addressing the very real threat of scammers. Perhaps it’s time to own up to the fact that every site has lots of scammers and talk about ways to stay safe instead of ignoring the problem.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
test comment.
I know of at least two people who have commented on this blog unfavorably. Yet, all I see is a “test comment.” Maybe, THAT comment isn’t as controversial as those you deleted?
Perusing comments on your other blogs leads me to believe you care only about those that tend to agree with your self-important views.
Maybe you should get to the point, denfend the book already instead of attacking me.
After your email, I now realize you had a problem with your comments feature. So, on to defending the book.
It may not be the most eloquently written piece of literature. At least, SOMEONE is trying to bring this issue to the forefront.
For those who aren’t aware of this issue’s enormity, I’m providing a bit of background. I’m deliberately omitting site names.
Unlike the typical 419 scam letters, which prey on people’s greed, these friendship/romance scams prey on people’s hearts and willingness to help those in need. Some scammers spend MONTHS developing trust.
I was not scammed out of money, nor was I taken in emotionally by these creeps. The issue goes a lot deeper than love and money. Sure, most have been scammed in either way, or both.
However, there are those that have faced CRIMINAL charges for UNKNOWINGLY being accomplices to money laundering, shipping and receiving, or theft. In essence, the victims are treated as criminals. Law enforcement and public figures, such as our Attorney General’s office, tend to sweep these things under the rug instead of addressing the issue. Yet, it makes news when a member of her own Fraud Department gets duped in an Ebay scam!
These scammers are EVERYWHERE….on every dating site, networking site, chat room, even roommate finder sites…..anywhere they can make a contact. Members of Romancescams have reported some of these scammers NUMEROUS times to various sites, providing proof, yet these sites do not remove them. Yes, some removal requests are successful, including the few I reported. Most of them aren’t.
After several attempts to have her scammer removed, one member tried to warn others about him, using the site’s forum. She was contacted by the administrator, telling her that she can’t bash other members. So, the offender’s name was removed from the forum. Then, she started merely educating others in the forum on the scams. The site’s administrator slapped her wrist AGAIN. She replied, saying that they are opening themselves up for a class action lawsuit. The administrator told her that they will not be threatened; and she, as a multi-year member, was banned from the site! How’s THAT for cooperation?!
This is just one story (the worst) of MANY showing how uncooperative most of these sites are in removing scammers’ profiles. And we PAY for these dating sites.
There is a small, TOTALLY FREE site, where the owner ACTIVELY checks IP addresses of members who join. If that member lies about location, he/she is banned. If this small, free site can do this, why can’t the large ones? The answer is NUMBERS. The more members registered on a site, the more people it will attract. After all, if you had the choice of joining a dating site with 500K members or one with only 100K, which would YOU choose?
It has also been reported that some of the funds acquired by these scammers is funneled to terrorist organizations. While writing this “waste of trees,” the authors’ computer came under cyber attack. After beefing up their security, the FBI became involved and traced the cyber attacks to countries harboring known terrorists. They also requested the authors’ local police guard them 24/7 until the book was published.
Knowing their lives might be at risk, the authors pressed on. I will also mention that the authors wrote, published, and printed this book on their OWN dime. They are THAT passionate concerning this scamming issue.
Since our laws can’t touch them over there, our only hope is educating people far and wide about these scams, how they are played out, and the emotional, financial, and legal trouble they could face. This book addresses that.
We have been making some strides as far as media attention. Our group was supposed to be featured on GMA, but we were part of a 4.5 minute segment, lumped in with a success story and some “pistol-packing mama” who had a bad first date. The clip is on the GMA site. Our segment was cut short for “breaking” news concerning the President’s surprise visit to Baghdad. In some areas of the country, it wasn’t aired at all.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as, “Don’t send money to people you don’t know.” That’s like telling teens, in the hope of preventing teen pregnancy, “Don’t have sex until you’re married.”
Every online dating site has scammers. Some are crawling with them. You don’t need to buy a book to learn how to spot the various Nigerian and Russian scammers on the internet.
Any published list of ‘bad’ dating sites is out of date as soon as it’s published.
The Russian scammers will join a dating site, send internal messages to hundreds of members within hours, and may not ever come back. If they get booted off of a dating site a day or so after they registered…so what? Hundreds of men will still write them, a percentage will send them money. The scammer is still ahead.
Do NOT support any dating site that will not REMOVE a scammer that you report to them, or make it too difficult for you to report the scammer!
Even if the dating site removes the scammers within hours, damage has been done.
Folks, if it looks too good to be true, it is!
Get your heads out of your arses!
Killing a few trees is a small price when it comes to saving thousands of people from broken hearts and a financial loss.
I commend Anna for writing the book, “Cyber Loves Illusions.” It’s a great book and one everyone should read who comes in contact with people over the internet.
Keep up the great work Anna!!! You have done a great service to many who are not aware of the growing problem that’s occurring on dating sites.
I FEEL YOUR COMMENTS REGARDING ANNA’S BOOK ABOUT DATING ON THE INTERNET WERE UNWARRANTED. IF YOU WERE A VICTIM OF THE NIGERIAN YAHOO BOYS–YOU WOULDN’T BE WRITING SOMETHING LIKE THIS.
I LIVE IN A SMALL TOWN WHERE DATING IS LIMITED–MOST OF THE AVAILABLE MEN ARE MARRIED (THE GOOD ONES)…I HAVE FOUND THAT INTERNET DATING IS GENERALLY GOOD. UP UNTIL JANUARY THAT WAS TRUE.
I AM LOVING CARING, RELIGIOUS WOMAN WHO FELL FOR A MAN FROM PENNSYLVANIA. WE HAD A CYBER RELATIONSHIP FOR MANY MONTHS—I DID GET SCAMMED FOR OVER $8300 (and he was a Nigerian –I didnt’ know it….PLEASE DON’T CALL ME DUMB AS I AM NOT…I AM A VICTIM. I AM AN EDUCATED PERSON WHO JUST FELL IN LOVE….I HAVE HAD SEVERAL BOYFRIENDS THAT I MET ON THE INTERNET AND THEY WERE WONDERFUL…..JUST BECAUSE WE FELL FOR A SCAM DOESN’T MEAN WE ARE DUMB…..I DO NOT FEEL THAT ANNA HAS WASTED ANY TREES WRIGING HER BOOK.
THE PURPOSE OF THE ROMANCE SCAMS GROUP IS ONLY TO SPREAD THE WORD. THE PEOPLE ON THIS SITE DON’T GET PAID….WE ARE ALL HERE ONLY TO WARN THE AMERICAN PUBLIC OF THE FACT THAT THERE ARE MEN OUT THERE THAT MAY CAPTURE YOUR HEART AND POCKETBOOK!! WE ARE ONLY HUMAN…PLEASE DON’T KNOCK A WOMAN SUCH AS ANNA WHO IS ONLY TRYING TO PASS THE WORD. WHAT THESE NIGERIAN SCAMMERS ARE DOING IS AGAINST THE LAW. IF THEY WERE IN THE U.S. THEY WOULD BE IN PRISON. SINCE THEY ARE OVERSEAS WE CANNOT TOUCH THEM…..RECENTLY WE HAVE THE ATTENTION OF THE NEWS MEDIA–AND I DON’T THINK WE WANT TO MENTION YOUR NAME!!
JOAN
Dear Dave Evans, Anna wrote the book to educate public about scam on dating sites, what did you do to educate the people who were scammed? It’s easy for you to say anything when you know what’s the scam about. Pinky
Many of the sites that get submitted to our dating directories are full of scammer profiles. I’ve recently started sending them friendly letters detailing ways they can clean their sites and suggesting they resubmit after they’ve implemented a clean up.
The thing that frustrates me is that it is pretty easy to eliminate most scammers. Nothing beats some judicious ip blocking (west africa, parts of the FSU, satellite internet services, proxies and zombies, datacentres), a spot of bayesian filtering, some staff training and a bit of common sense.
A small percentage will always get through but you can trap them with bayesian filtering on your messaging system – as long as they don’t take their communications off site.
One advantage we found is that not only do you loose most of your scammers but you also drastically cut back on credit card fraud and chargebacks.
I sometimes wonder if some webmasters are reluctant to remove the scammers. After all many of the fake profile are “too good to be true” and those Focus Hawaii model photos can bring in paying members.
Then again perhaps I’m getting too cynical for this industry?
As an operator of a free dating site, I think it is up to the site to protect its members from both scammers and spammers. One of the best ways to do this is to allow judicous blocking of other members and to have strict email rules.
It’s not rocket science to ban scammers. OtherSingles checks the IP address of anyone creating a profile and deletes the profile after it is created if that profile is created from Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria Ivory Coast or Ghana. Why do I wait until they create a profile, because I like to make them waste their time. Any scammers using a highjacked PC or anonymizer service is also remove and they are banned based on their confirmed email address. This entire process is fully automated. If a one man run free site like OtherSingles can do this so can the others. It is criminal how the larger dating sites know about the scammers and do nothing except charge their users for the privledge of being scammed.
Jon, my intention was not to be overly glib or insensitive. You are way off base with your accusations, which I understand because you obviously haven’t been reading my blog for very long. For one thing, I never said I read the book.
I would be more than happy to do a podcast with you which we can publish here, for all of the dating industry to listen to.
Topics:
These supposed inaccuracies. Your head in the sand, my glibness, etc.
The book, should be living dynamic documents tied into live databases of scammers, with the participation of all dating sites. See my recent member whitelist post for more information.
Your inncurate assumption that I don’t know anything about romance scamming. I chose to challenge common assertions is a means to spark dialog, as the post has done. I am not against anything people have been doing to fight scammers, I simply am thinking about building more effective way of doing things than making people read books, which is terribly inefficient when it comes to something as important as anti-scammer education. Let’s dig into this.
Compassion from dating sites = what can we do to make more money.
Your multiple paragraphs focused on True.com and terrorism.
Your lack of trust and understanding of the current online dating situation making its way through our judicial system.
Let me know if you’re interested in discussing further.
just responding to Ed’s article: It’s not rocket science to ban scammers. OtherSingles checks the IP address of anyone creating a profile and deletes the profile after it is created if that profile is created from Russia, Ukraine, Nigeria Ivory Coast or Ghana. Why do I wait until they create a profile, because I like to make them waste their time. Any scammers using a highjacked PC or anonymizer service is also remove and they are banned based on their confirmed email address. This entire process is fully automated. If a one man run free site like OtherSingles can do this so can the others. It is criminal how the larger dating sites know about the scammers and do nothing except charge their users for the privledge of being scammed.
It is is not easy to stop scammers. they have many ways…and they are just like regular people. My dating site http://www.allaboutsingles.com/singles
has many people trying to scam us. It could be that we advertise most of our services under the term free dating site or free dating service so that people want to use it to scam our members. They use such scams as. My father died and I have 20 million dollars to share with you, or another favorite of mine is…I want to marry you, using a hot girls pictures. My dad died and left me 20 millions dollars. I want you and I to have this. since we are getting married why don’t I just wire this into your account that already has funds……nice…
We have a dating advice column manned by my wife. she does nice work. http://dating-advice.allaboutsingles.com, or if you just want to chat then http://chat.allaboutsingles.com
thanks you for listening
Scott
Scott,
One of the ways you can stop the scammers is to do a check on every email sent on your system and compare it to previously sent email from that member. If they are cutting and pasting the same email over and over you can throttle their account while you verify the contents of the email.
Scammers are easy to spot and I’ve never even heard of the book. I’m new to dating sites and have already busted three before their heads could do a 180. They always say they are going to work in Nigeria. Or the UK. Then they tell you that they love you. Then, they ask you to go to western Union or some bank. BUSTED. Dead giveaway. Don’t need a book, just plain old common sense.
Dating website scammers Fail Proof way.
I have been on various dating sites. There are fail proof methods.
!. Ask a question. Ask the same question 3 emails in a row. If there is no reply on your question, the person is copying and pasting their text and moving on to the next.
2. Choose to stay on the site for several of more emails. Do give out your email readily.
3. If you still have doubt and you want to send money, ask them to send a picture of themselves holding a piece of paper with their face on it saying “can’t wait to see you (your name)”. That will prove that they are real. Say that I think that you would understand since it is so much money.
Say also:
“If you were with me and you knew that I wanted to send money to someone based upon just words and pictures, you would slap me aside my head”.
Remeber:
Questions…Questions…Questions