Article Subject: Quick tips to spotting scam dating sites - Part 1 - Online Dating Briefs by Dr. Dato

Dr. Dato’s Brief:

Part 2, Part 3

In continuing today’s theme, I have listed a few key pointers on how to be wise to the dating sites that are all around us today. Love is a very powerful force in all of us and unfortunately some dating sites will exploit this ‘emotion’ in more ways than one. They will make false promises and claims and some of them will even fake an entire website just to get your money!

Here, I report on a potential scam website that is around us today. This is not a fake dating site but it is a way that some people will go to in length to swindle you out of money and this could equally apply to any dating websites.

The culprit website is called internetnews8.com and it’s a totally fake website, but to the untrained user the website looks very genuine. See the picture below.

fig. 1. A completely fake website but it looks so genuine and real?

How do we tell if this website is real or fake, just click on the image below to see an enlarged image of the notes I made on the website (you may need to click twice in succession to see the enlarged view).

Whenever you suspect something is not right, this is what you must observe:

• Look at the url (on the address bar), it will change to different pages as you navigate through the site. In this example, a window always pops up to try and sell you their product which by the way is also a scam.
• They will lift images from reputable sites and make it look very real. Try to click on any of those images or links and see if they actually take you anywhere genuine. Most likely, they will bring you back to their site (with a pop-up) of course.
• Look at the testimonials and follow your gut feelings (if something is too good to be true, it often is!)

I will have more information on detecting scam websites, on the 2nd part of this series.

fig 2. How to detect spam dating websites very quickly and easily (click on the image to enlarge, click again if you dont see the larger image)