Don't Let Internet Bandits Steal Your Heart and Money.
Unfortunately, the internet is full of scammers and dating and social networking sites are prime targets. Many sites don't bother to try and get rid of scammers because they often have nice profiles that attracts more members. Here at the Hitching-Post we make efforts to try and spot and remove scammers. Since we have rather strict limitations on what visitors and free members have access to, as well as screening methods, scammers aren't likely to be a major problem on our site. However, scammers can be very creative and occasionally will slip through the cracks.
You can help by reporting any suspicious members you may come across.
Things to watch for:
- Scammer says he/she is part of a charitable organization and needs your donation. This is a scam! Real charitable organizations do not use dating services to solicit donations!
- Scammers use photos of models from modeling sites or from magazines. If the photo looks too professional, be cautious, try asking them to supply another photo, if it's a scammer you will get nothing but excuses.
- Scammers often ask for your email address or Yahoo messenger handle right away, or give you theirs. They want to communicate off site as soon as possible. The main reason being is, they don't want the evidence of their scamming to be visible to the site administrators as they will normally be kicked off.
- The member has a hard luck story, they are sick or have a sick parent or child, or is stuck in a foriegn country and they need your help. They are very good at making you feel sorry for them. You may feel inclined to help them and send them money. Don't do it, this is a scam!
- The member offers you money. They will do this to try and gain your trust. They will send counterfeit cashiers checks which will eventually bounce at your bank which could lead to you getting into trouble with your bank and/or authorities.
- The member speaks or writes in very broken English with real bad grammer. A lot of scammers will run their text through automated translators, and their profiles and emails will often appear and sound a little strange.
- The member begins to make references of being in or from a foriegn country especially Nigeria, and sometimes Russia or the Ukraine. These countries are not within our accepted membership areas, and have most likely created a fake profile and have no business being on our site.
- They want to send you some photos to your personal email address, they may use the excuse that they cannot upload them to the site. Facts: If they can email a photo to you, they can upload the photo to the site, if they truely have an issue uploading photos they can contact us for assistance. The scammer is after your email address which will be sold and/or used for all sorts of purposes.
- Scammer is planning to visit your town and wants to meet you and would like to send money ahead for use while there and are going to trust you to cash a check for them. They may want you to buy something with the money and send it to them - or they land up saying their trip falls through and ask you to send the money back. Scammer sends you a counterfeit cashiers check and you end up losing the money you sent to them. Not only that, but you may also find yourself in trouble with the bank and/or authorities for cashing bogus checks.
There are many variations of the scams described above, these are just some of the most common being used. The bottom line is, if someone immediately out of the gate begins asking for personal info or wanting to email you, or within a short period starts mentioning money (sending or receiving), it should raise a red flag.
Click Here to see a sample screenshot of a typical message by a scammer
What to do if you suspect a scammer:
- Report the person to us so we can investigate and take appropriate action, such as suspending or removing them from the site.
- DO NOT enter into any further correspondence with them once they are suspected as being a scammer. Don't feel guilty about this, incredible, but some of us are SO polite we feel bad about not replying to messages, just remember you don't really know this person nor do you have any obligations to them.
- DO NOT SEND MONEY, no matter how plausible the story is, no matter how long you've been corresponding with the person, no matter how much you feel they are trustworthy.
Just in case you didn't get that ... "DO NOT SEND MONEY".
Special Note: This info is provided simply to create awareness and shouldn't scare you off from interacting with members. We make a serious conscience effort to try and keep scammers and scum out and the vast majority of our members are genuine people with similar interests and objectives, and joined for many of the same reasons you did, so have fun and stay safe.
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