Image Credit: cottonbro studio
While I am not a fan of dating or finding a date through an app, I try not to judge those who do. But every day I see evidence of the danger presented when the heart overrules the head. Dating apps have been gaining momentum from extortion through fake profiles and photos, to death and criminality.
Sometimes, people think this only occurs with the young and naïve believing in a state of alleged reality that those individuals masquerading as the real person depicted in the photos on these apps are tried and true. But we also find that people over 50, 60, and 70 are being spammed, scammed, and flimflammed. Victim exploitation occurs when prime candidates want to get back out on the dating scene, but are oversharing information about their loneliness, that they are a widow or widower, they are isolated and lonely, or these scammers detect obvious neediness. Bingo! They check into your life and don’t check out, at least not that easy anyway, and without repercussions.
Often I wonder how these people can live with themselves, taking things so far and threatening their victims because their victims have unknowingly fed them all they need to know to take advantage of and manipulate them to financial ruin, criminal prosecution, winding up on a missing persons report, or even death. I’ve known of a few people who are considered smart, with educational achievements, and appear to have good common sense who vow to the validity of some of these dating apps, only to come out on the losing end of the deal because they were played like a monopoly game, resulting in no love and no satisfaction.
While there are some success stories with these dating apps, you must be careful about who you let into your life and personal space when they knock. I’m sure that the developers of these dating apps designed their objective to connect like-minded people looking for love or companionship. But as always, when something has been developed for good, like social media in general, we find that shady characters look for ways to manipulate a person’s trust and see where such individuals are desperate by offering too much or all of themselves before realizing they are in too deep.
If you are using one or more of these apps, please exercise caution, because these exploiters are seasoned by what they do. They could care less about your hurt feelings or pride, they just care about how much they can extort from you.
Image Credit: Pixabay
From Behind the Pen 