Happy New Year

Sunday 19th January 2020

Happy New Year everyone and here is to another year of trying to teach you how to recognise scammers and prevent you from being emotionally hurt and financially poorer because of the online romance scammers.

In a post before Christmas I hinted that I was going to change the way I do things on here and on Instagram.  I have been giving it a lot of thought lately because I haven't been able to spend as much time updating information on here as I am so busy with my Instagram page.  Instagram is great and the support I receive on there from people who follow me is brilliant.  You are all amazing sending me lots and lots of fake accounts every day which I am posting as fast as is humanly possible there.  I was also trying to post them on here but that just isn't possible.  So I have decided on a slight change of direction for the blog and Instagram. 

 On Instagram I am going keep posting the fake accounts that you send me.  My Instagram username is @insta_scammers2020. I usually use the hashtag system with each post.  A hashtag is a way of organising information into one place on social media and is a way to search for that information there too.  So under each post there is usually one, or maybe two, hashtags eg #fakeusingstolenpictures which says fake using stolen pictures; or it will have the real man's name plus the word fake eg #drfernandopintogomesfake which says Dr Fernando Pinto Gomes fake.  Please understand that the words of the hashtag have to be run together so there are no spaces and there can be no other punctuation marks either.  I do understand that for non-native speakers of English that this may make it harder to read but you will soon get the hang of it. As I said a # is searchable and you can click on the hashtag under each post and it will take you to all the fake accounts that have been added on Instagram, by myself and a few other scam busters, we have found or been sent that are using the same images.  Go and have a look and you will soon see the size of the problem we are facing online with these romance scammers. I dare you to search the #drfernandogomespintofake hashtag.  You can do this in the search section on Instagram or find a post of mine on there of the doctor being used by a scammer.

Here on the blog,  I am going to use it as a place to introduce you to the real guys that are used the most often by the online scammers.  This is a way to familiarise yourself with the most used faces so that you can instantly see if an account is fake because you recognise the person in the pictures.  

That being said, I will not be adding the real people's usernames on any social media platform.  The reason for this is that most of the men get so many absolutely awful messages from women who have been scammed by those using their images.  These men are violated every single time a fake account is created using their images.  They are then also let down by the women who have been duped and quite often messages sent can be downright nasty, rude and frankly threatening to both them and their families.  I cannot tolerate this at all and I will not give you the information you need.  I cannot prevent you from finding their usernames yourself but I would urge you to think extremely carefully about the reasons why you wish to contact the real person.  If it is simply to tell them they are being used then you don't need to tell them.  Every one of them is aware they are being used and is as annoyed and hurt as you are about it and as powerless to stop it from happening.  If you want to contact them because you want retribution, or you are feeling taken advantage of then again, please don't.  They are so bombarded on a daily basis that they probably will not respond and some of them are so beyond caring now that they may well respond to you in an extremely annoyed and rude way.  I cannot say that I blame them.  They just want to be left alone to live their lives and post on social media in the same way that we do, without having their pictures stolen and used in nefarious ways. You feel pissed off and annoyed about being approached by fake accounts online?  Well then imagine having thousands of Nigerians and other nationalities use your images that are years old to make online accounts to then steal from others.  Yeah, perhaps you can now think a bit from the real people's points of view and just leave them alone, smarten up and not send stuff to anyone online.  Educating ourselves about this kind of thing is the only way to stop it.  If we stop them from getting this money of OURS then we can stop them approaching us.  It's not about stopping scams - humans will always try the easy route to trick others - sadly it is human nature and been going on for as long as we have existed on this planet.  We have to keep ourselves safe online and stop making ourselves targets that they can attack and we do this by simply not falling for all their terrible lies.  We learn to use reverse image search, we look out for the red flags, we learn what they are and keep up to date with new techniques and strategies.  And on this blog I will help you to identify the red flags, the new techniques and strategies.  They are not unique, they are the techniques that all romance scammers use to suck you in and get you to believe them.

I also intend to show you other tricks and tips on how to spot a fake and how to stop yourself from being a victim and a target for online scammers.

My first piece of advice is this and it is simple - never send ANYTHING, be it money, gift cards, technology, whatever, to anyone who has befriended you online.  My other piece of advice is - never accept ANYTHING from someone who has befriended you online.  By this I mean never say you will accept a parcel, never give out your bank details so they can send you money and never say you will accept a transaction at MoneyGram, Western Union or any other money changing service.  If you keep to these two simple rules then you will NOT  be a victim of a romance scammer.