If you’re a newbie in online dating you might not know about this yet, but if you’ve been using dating apps for a while, there’s a very high chance that you’ve already encountered fake profiles on dating sites. This wouldn’t be a problem if the dating app you are using has an identity verification features. But if it doesn’t, you have to learn how to identify fake dating sites profiles yourself.

Why Identifying Fake Dating App Profiles is so Important

But Hinge is making a concentrated effort to discourage the creation of fake profiles, so new users are required to have at least 60 Facebook friends to sign up that way. Free Hinge users can comment on or “like” a photo or prompt answer in up to 10 profiles a day. The USP: With more than 400 million members, Badoo is one of the world's most popular dating apps and part of the same umbrella company as Bumble. Uniquely, it allows users to live stream.

The main reason is criminals and scammers are using fake profiles to find and lure their victims. They will sign up on dating apps using fake names and use attractive photos that they just downloaded from the internet. The most common type of online dating scam is called the romance scam or the love scam. The scam basically works this way: scammers will find lonely dating app members and make them fall in love, then they will start asking money. According to our research, romance scam is the top reason why people lose their money online.

Tips to Spot Fake Dating App Members

1. Their Photos look too Professional

If their photos look like it was shot in a studio or it was made for a commercial, there’s a chance that the photo was stolen from professional models. Don’t immediately trust members that have celebrity like photos. Profiles that have more probability of being legit are those with photos that look like they were shot with a mobile phone camera and not from professional photography cameras.

2. They Love you Right Away

One of the common signs of a dating app member being a scammer is they profess their love for you the moment you start chatting. Scammers will say they like you and they want to meet you right away even without getting to know you first. This does not mean all members who do this are all scammers, but the majority are.

3. Poor Grammar

If they say that they are from the USA or UK but they can’t construct good sentences, you might wanna doubt if they really are who they say they are. Most online daters don’t really care about this but according to our research, 90% of online dating scammers have poor English grammar.

4. They don’t want to meet in person

If the dating app member you are chatting with doesn’t want to meet in person, he or she must be hiding something. Perhaps their name, photo, and address are all fake. Sure meeting up with strangers you just met from dating apps is very scary but as long as you follow some of our safety tips, you should be fine:

• Get to know about them first, do not rush in meeting them up.
• Use the dating app’s identity verification measures if they have one.
• On your first date, meet in public places.
• Bring a friend to your first meeting or introduce your date to your friends. It’s always a good idea for people around you to know who you are dating.

5. Ask some Questions about your Place

If they claim that they live near you, you can easily check whether they are telling the truth or not by asking questions like what the most famous restaurant around town.

6. Copy-pasted Messages

Scammers send the same spam messages to multiple dating app members at once, hoping for someone to bite the bait and respond to their message. You may get generic phrases like “Hi how are you…” or “hey handsome…” all the time which most probably came from scammers. Aside from scammers, these kinds of messages could also come from bots. Brand new dating apps that don’t have members yet use bots to make it look like they have thousands of members already. These bots automatically send messages to new members pretending to be real people.

7. They Don’t Want to Show their Face on Camera

One of the most effective ways to check whether the person you’re chatting with is using their real identity is by asking them to video chat with you. Scammers will make reasons like they have a broken camera, etc. to avoid it. Some online daters are scared about showing their face to strangers but it should be safe as long as you only show your face and not some other things, this is to avoid risks of being extorted in the future.

Dating App With Least Fake Profiles Reviews

8. Check their Social Media Profiles

We could all agree that everyone today is on social media. If your date doesn’t have any social media accounts, there’s a chance that they’re using fake names. Even if they have one, you should still make sure that it’s a legit account. Check if the social media profile is not just made last month, check if they have complete profile information, check if they have friends, and check if they have photos with friends and family and not just selfie pictures.

Bottomline

These tips are proven effective ways to spot fake profiles from dating apps. But if you don’t like to risk it, what we can advise you is to only use authoritative and legit dating apps only. Famous dating apps like Tinder, eHarmony, Match already have identity verification methods in place to prevent people using fake identity from signing up.

You might've seen people get catfished on the MTV show, but it's also happening off-camera shockingly often. And one of the most common places to find catfishers is on dating apps. But fortunately, a number of apps are figuring out how to prevent catfishing and adding features that force users to be honest about who they are.

The issue they're dealing with, after all, is pretty serious. One report by Glamour found that 10 percent of profiles on some dating apps are fake. And according to a Pew Research survey, 54 percent of online daters say someone they've met online has given them false information. So, it makes sense that catching catfish has been a priority of dating apps lately. Online dating takes up a cumbersome amount of time to begin with, and the process of figuring out whether or not you're talking to who you think you are is too much to deal with on top of that. Sometimes, though, preventing fake profiles is as simple as having users take selfies or upload videos.

'We're releasing photo verification, so we're eliminating that sense that these are not real people or they're not presenting as real as they should be,' Alexandra Chong, President of Badoo, tells Bustle.

Dating App Profile Help

Here are few apps to check out if you want a catfish-free online dating experience. Hopefully, as more apps follow in their footsteps, catfishers won't have anywhere to turn to.

1. Bumble

The latest app to add an anti-catfishing feature is Bumble, the dating app that makes heterosexual women make the first move. Before users can start swiping, they need to upload a photo of themselves in one of 100 poses suggested by the app. Bumble's moderators will vet the selfies to make sure they're the people in the users' profiles.

2. Badoo

Badoo, one of the largest dating sites in the world, launched a feature in March that lets users verify their identities. Like Bumble, it shows them a gesture and asks them to upload a photo replicating it so they can't use something already on their phones or computers. While people can use the app without taking these photos, Badoo users can change their settings to only see verified profiles, which means potential catfish won't be seen as often.

3. Huggle

Which Dating Site Has Least Fake Profiles

Huggle, an app that connects people who visit the same cafes, clubs, and other establishments, recently started letting people take selfies to verify their accounts. The app asks them to assume a specific, unusual pose, with their hands in an L shape under their chins, and its moderators make sure it's actually the same person in the profile photo. Founders Valerie Stark and Stina Sanders were motivated to create Huggle and add this feature after feeling too uncomfortable on social apps themselves. 'Catfishing is a serious issue online, and we want to ensure that all our users are safe and engaging with real profiles,' Stark tells Bustle.

4. Blume

While the other apps here added a selfie feature some time after their creation, Blume was founded with the goal of stopping catfishing. And instead of moderators, users themselves vet the photos. When you match with somebody, you each have to take a selfie, then each person verifies that their match's selfie looks like the person they claim to be before a message line opens up.

5. Coy

New App Dating

Rather than stopping catfishing with selfies, Coy uses videos. Users have to upload video profiles, which makes it a lot harder to pretend to be somebody else. Once people find someone they want to connect with, they can send them their video as an introduction, and they chat if they both like what they see (and hear).

With all these apps hopping on board the anti-catfish bandwagon, maybe catfishing will soon be a thing of the past. And while there is that rare couple that comes out of catfishing, that's good news for the great majority of us.

No Commitment Dating Sites

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