I explain how to spot those folks who want to pull money out of your pocket.
As a 51-year-old cis male, do you think I run into my share of scammers??? Yes, I do. I’ve run into a metric ton of them. I’m going to give you an overview of how to spot them in this article. Oh, I should note here that no scammer has ever been able to get anything from me. They’ve tried, but they did not succeed. Note that although I’m pansexual, I have turned off the men from my searches. I got too many crappy matches with men. It is just a way for me to reduce the noise. So I’m going to talk about girls in what follows. I say “girls” because they are usually quite a bit younger than I am.
If anybody asks you for gift cards, run in the opposite direction. I’ve had a couple of people play that game with me. One of them was even a lady older than I was. She sounded real until she started asking for flowers or gift cards. I’m really not sure what game she was playing. Either she was straight out trying to scam me, or perhaps she was just using me as a device to get someone else jealous.
If anybody is substantially away from you, or if they are at the mercy of someone else for their comings and goings, be on your guard. The first person who asked for gift cards was supposedly on a military base. The second person, the lady I mentioned above, was on the other side of the country, but she was going to travel to my area on business. Let me tell you what happens if you stupidly send them money. A few days later, they come back saying that they’ve been deployed and cannot see you, or that their company decided that they wouldn’t travel.
Then there are those girls who state that the only thing they want is a hookup. By and large, these are fakes. In the same category, there are those girls who look like Sports Illustrated models, and have highly generic profiles. Sometimes the profile will have no text at all. In all likelihood, they are scammers. Yes, I’ve matched with some, and yes, I quickly discovered that they are after my money.
Another sign that you are dealing with a scammer is if you match with someone, you chat with them for a bit in the dating app you are using, and they very quickly ask to move off platform. These people want to do you in, without the platform knowing about it. Mind you, the problem here is that it is generally reasonable to want to move off platform at some point. Part of the problem is that, unfortunately, the apps are buggy. So it is hard to tell you how long you should wait.
Forcibly, if someone wanting to move off platform too fast is bad, it is even worse when someone puts a social medial handle to Snapchat, Instagram, or some other platform in their profile. I don’t think I’ve ever followed such a handle. However, early in my dating career, I’ve sometimes accepted to follow people who asked in chat to move off platform to Snapchat or some other platform. They all proved to be scammers. If I see a handle in the profile, I report them to the platform.
Some people may ask for your social media handles to verify if you are real. To me, this is a sign of a scammer. None of the people I went to bed with actually asked any of this. They saw I was real when they met me. That’s it. I know this is the sign of a scammer, because one girl tried to scam me this way. She got my social media handle, and then she threatened to send a dick pic to my “followers.” I had someone else ask for verification, but that chat died early.
Some people may try to scam you like the girl I mentioned above. They will want to get your social media handle and threaten to send your profile picture, with the picture of a dick, to your followers. The dick does not have to belong to you. Unfortunately, with the data breaches that happen around the world, it may be fairly easy to link your identity on a dating app, to your social medial handle somewhere else. I believe one girl found out a social media handle of mine like this.
If someone threatens you with sending your dick pic to your followers, they will ask for money. Do not give them the money. It happened twice to me that people tried to scam me like this. I unmatched and sent them no money. When you think about it, if they execute their threat, this is only more work for them, without reward. You’re not going to come back and give them your money, right? No, they just move on to the next poor schmuck. As I mentioned, it happened twice to me, and no picture was sent anywhere.
Because of the case above, I also have to warn you against sending nudes of yourself. Even if someone sends you nudes in order to entice you to return the favor, do not do it. They can still be a scammer who is sending someone else’s nudes and is trying to trap you. By and large, the people I’ve gone to bed with did not ask me for nudes. If someone wants to send me nudes, I’ll let them do it, but I’ll also warn them that I cannot reciprocate. I had one girl in this situation. I think she felt a bit insecure. She was my girlfriend for a while.
Then there are those girls who will sound like they want to date you. You will set a day for the date, and the morning of the date, they will ask for gas money, or money to repair a nail, or something else. I’ve sometimes tried to talk about the amount they are asking, or to suggest that they ask someone in their immediate entourage, but that’s a complete waste. If I run into someone like this now, I just unmatch. Similar to these girls, I ran into one girl who needed money for a new alternator for her car. She brought this up very quickly, probably thinking that I’m a sugar daddy.
I’ll note here that I’m no sugar daddy. I also have for policy to absolutely under no circumstances send money to someone I have not met in real life. This is a real policy, and I’ve used it a bunch of times. I don’t know how many times we will have to meet before I feel comfortable giving money to someone, but prior to the first date ain’t it.
Some of the psychology at play here seems to be the sunk cost fallacy. If you’ve spent time and energy on a match, you may feel compelled to plunk in a little money to see to it that this time and energy is not wasted. I’ve not spent any money, but I believe that this is a lost cause. If you do spend money, you’ll only be losing the money in addition to time and energy. Don’t do it.
Finally, I’ll add that I pass on straight people. If you recall, I’m pansexual. In theory, I could get in on with a straight person, in practice I find that those that respond to me are always scammers. So, in order to not spend time fruitlessly on a scammer, I just pass on straight people. Sorry, if you are straight, I’m sure that you are lovely, but on the dating apps, this is how I roll. Of course, straight people cannot use this strategy.
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