Just in time for Valentine’s Day, dating scams are on the rise. Since the advent of chat rooms, instant messenger, and social media, people have been falling in love in cyberspace. While meeting people over the internet is nothing new, neither are the risks that come along with it. Anyone could be hidden behind words in a box on a screen, even a con artist. Now, Skype has become grounds for crooks to dupe lonely victims into love scams.
If you’re a Skype user, you know that it’s common to receive requests from people you don’t know. If someone is trying to contact you and you don’t know who they are, block them. Skype will investigate the user and if they are malicious or suspicious, Skype will block the user from the platform entirely. However, many victims don’t stop to think that maybe this mysterious stranger is a con artist. A curious, naïve, or lonely user may accept this contact request, and the con artist will commence to kindle an online romance with the victim.
There are two ways con artists are now using Skype to lure in and extort lonely hearts looking for a sincere connection. The first is through the Skype phone service. The con artist will build trust with the victim and coax the victim into what they feel is a legitimate – albeit online – romantic connection. Once feelings have been developed and trust established, the con artist will solicit money from the victim to bail him or her out of a horrible situation, a tragedy, or another predicament. Whether or not this predicament actually exists, the victim may never find out.
The second con is more sinister, and much harder to defend yourself against once you have fallen into the trap. Skype, of course, is a video chat technology. Once a victim and a con artist have established an online romance and some level of trust, the con artist will get the victim to say something, do something, or reveal something to them over video chat under the guise of intimacy. Of course, this will be recorded and used for blackmail against the victim. The con artist will then threaten to post the video online or email it to friends and family. If this happens to you, notify the police immediately. Skype may not help you if you call them directly, but they will cooperate with a police investigation. Even if a victim pays the initial ransom, there’s no guarantee that the video won’t be posted online or mailed to friends and family anyway, AND there’s no guaranteeing the scammer won’t come back for round two. While research suggests Skype scammers will almost never follow through on their threats, victims are still at risk of their sensitive information being exposed. So long as the con artist possesses the video, the victim is held hostage to blackmail.
The sad truth is love scams have become so commonplace on Skype that there now exists an entire community forum on the subject. From this discussion forum, we can extrapolate three simple tips you can use to protect yourself from falling victim to even the smoothest-talking love scammer:
- Block friend requests from people you don’t know.
- Never do or say anything on video chat that you don’t want leaked to friends, family, and the entire internet.
- If you get caught up in a love scam, call the police.
This Valentine’s Day, when you go looking for love, don’t look on Skype. The mysterious stranger reaching out across cyberspace is most likely a con artist, and you deserve better.