How do Romance Scams start?

Romance scams usually will start on online dating platforms or it could be social media or other kind of messaging sites, where a stranger will connect with their victim. They’ll establish a kind of a relationship with that person. Usually fairly quickly they will try to move off those online platforms and move over to communicating solely through email.

What do they do then?

They will spend a lot of time developing a relationship with their victim, including getting romantic and telling them they love them and such like. The reason they spend so much time at this is because they make a lot of money from it.

How would you know it is a scam?

The way you know it’s going to be a romance scam is they try to get you to wire them money for various reasons:

• They may be trying to plan a trip to come and visit you.
• They might have got mugged and they suddenly need some money.
• Over a period time they might have a “sick relative” that needs medical attention and they need money.

But they always want you to wire them money.

Bottom line:

So the thing here is folks … if somebody you have never met wants you to wire them money, don’t do it, it is a scam. Trust me on this. It is absolutely always a scam.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

How can L2 Cyber Security help you?

We offer a full range of training programmes, which can be delivered online or in-person*.

L2 Cyber Security are also a partner of CyberRiskAware for online self-directed Cyber Security Awareness training and Phishing testing.

Contact us for more information at info@L2CyberSecurity.com.

*With appropriate social distancing and other health and safety measures adhered to.

Follow us on Social media:

Liam is available on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Follow L2 Cyber on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

© L2 Cyber Security Solutions

The post #WeekendWisdom 080 Romance Scams appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

I will talk about sextortion through email, which is much more common, in a future one of these.

Where did you come across this sextortion through dating apps thing?

The good folks over at the Internet Storm Center put up a post this week talking about an online forum that they have discovered. The posts on this forum are full of details about people and these details are coming from dating apps.

What are the evil doers doing?

What the criminals are doing is they are creating lots and lots of fake profiles on dating sites and dating apps. Then when they get connected with their victims, which are nearly always men, they will get into conversations with them. They will ask them what their sexual preferences are. What they like doing. They will try to get them to virtually cheat on their partners, etc. They gather all of this information and they put it into a post on this online forum which is actually in the public domain.

Then what they do is contact the victim and say “If you want us to take down this post with all your sexual preferences, etc., this embarrassing information, pay us some money.” And they do apparently do this when they are paid money.

What’s the problem then?

But the thing is these sites have been in the public domain, they might be indexed by Google or they might be also in an internet archive. So that information is still up and is probably still in the public domain.

What can I do to protect myself?

So it’s just a case of being very careful about who you contact and who you can converse with on these dating sites.

So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

How can L2 Cyber Security help you?

We offer a full range of training programmes, which can be delivered online or in-person*.

L2 Cyber Security are also a partner of CyberRiskAware for online self-directed Cyber Security Awareness training.

Contact us for more information at info@L2CyberSecurity.com.

*With appropriate social distancing and other health and safety measures adhered to.

Follow us on Social media:

Liam is available on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Follow L2 Cyber on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

© L2 Cyber Security Solutions

The post #WeekendWisdom 033 Sextortion through Dating Apps appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..