Valentines Day Dating Scams Warning

On today's pentest people Tech Bytes, we will be talking about online dating scams. Action fraud is warning people to stay vigilant as romance scams pick up pace as Valentine's day is near to discuss this today, I have our consultant Liam Pauline, it's great to have you back on a tech bite.

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Thanks very much for having him.

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And joining him today is Kate Watson marketing assistant here at pentest people who will be talking about this alongside him. So okay, do you have any comments about Valentine's Day approaching
as Valentine's Day is very fast approaching. And there's obviously a lot of online scams leading up to Valentine's Day on Valentine's Day and even a little bit after Valentine's Day. And so obviously, it's important to raise awareness of the scams and what sort of scams are out there around Valentine's Day. So first up, let's talk cat fishing. catfishing is a term used to describe a fake online dating profile that uses unrealistic attractive photos to lurk victims into a relationship. Now common signs of this are usually the pictures are way too attractive. And and the person is never able to go on video chat or call. Now I read a really interesting stat statistic earlier that 20,000 people a year get catfished and this rose to 23,000 in 2020. So do you think that is down to the pandemic?
I think it'd be difficult to say for certain. But it's definitely I think we'd be churlish to roll it out completely. Naturally, when COVID-19 pandemic started rolling out globally, there were everyone was forced to go inside. And so you're left with very little to do people started feeling quite isolated, feeling quite lonely. And then that could have been compounded by not feeling very good about yourself and then wanting to go and catfish people because you want that attention that you know these incredibly attractive, alluring profiles.

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I think it'd be difficult to say for certain. But it's definitely I think we'd be churlish to roll it out completely. Naturally, when COVID-19 pandemic started rolling out globally, there were everyone was forced to go inside. And so you're left with very little to do people started feeling quite isolated, feeling quite lonely. And then that could have been compounded by not feeling very good about yourself and then wanting to go and catfish people because you want that attention that you know these incredibly attractive, alluring profiles. Get you
I think as well with like the restrictions like thinking back to that time, the restrictions were very, like you can go out bars one open, you couldn't really go out and meet people. And you can like not even for a walk on point.
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's almost a catfishes dream, isn't it, you're never going to get caught out. And you can just say, you know, maybe your internet's on the blink and suddenly dowty video calls either it can all be text based.
So if if someone was getting catfished, or they were suspicious that maybe someone online that they were talking to was a catfish? And what sort of precautions can people take for that?
I mean, the kind of obvious one is just try and get people on video calls or try and get them to engage in media that can't be easily faked or reused. So unique videos or videos of them talking saying things in context. And of course, then Video causes as being being the kind of epitome of that you, you it's very difficult to you know, I mean, we do now have the technology to fake those kinds of things. But it can it takes quite a lot of money and a lot of technical expertise. And you can only be be so careful. Otherwise you'd spend spend all your time walking around with a tinfoil hat on.
Yeah, that's exactly. And, and another really interesting statistic that I read was 30% of 25 to 34 year olds revealed that they have fallen for a fake profile. Now to me, when I read that, I instantly thought that, like naturally I thought that the age groups would be younger. I didn't realise that that. Like in my head, I just thought 25 to 34 year olds like that surprised me a bit. Does it surprise? Did it surprise you? No,
I think anybody can, can get kind of caught out by one of these. I mean, people don't stop being attracted to attractive people and they tend to 2728. I'm surprised it doesn't even get older than that. If I'm being totally honest, that may just be reflective of who's using dating apps. So would you say it's more men are women who are catfishing?

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I don't think we'd be able to comment on that. I don't think there'd be any statistics to back that up. Or at least I certainly haven't seen any. I imagine it's pretty even anybody, anybody can be a scammer, as it were. I don't think gender necessarily has anything to do with it.

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This nicely leads into the next top common scam and which is romance scamming. And so this is really similar to catfishing but it normally requires a financial benefit. So more was more about sending money or paying for an emergency, or a medical emergency. As a type of example, this is tenuous swindler. Has any of you guys watched this? I have Yes. Yeah.

I've seen. And

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I read, I read up about it a couple of days ago. Like he got 10 million off his victims. Like $10 million off three victims. Wow. Yeah. That's
coming up with some sob stories. Money on the actual show? Yes, yes. He makes those effects now, isn't it?

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Yeah. So he kind of purports that there's emergencies going on. I mean, it's pretty standard kind of social engineering technique is the way it used is he developed a trust relationship. Some social engineering hijacks a trust relationship, some social engineering creates a trust relationship, romance, romantic scams like this. Create a trust relationship, you build up a relationship with somebody a romantic or even sexual relationship with someone. And then that is then exploited. And normally, and with most social engineering, it's the same premise, it's some kind of alert or call to action that you, you have to go and do something. And it has to be done quite urgently, because somebody is in danger. Or in everyone's received that kind of text pretending to be from their boss. And they say, Oh, by me, you know, 600 quids worth of Amazon gift cards immediately, or else the threat there obviously, is that you'd lose your job or you'd be discipline within your workplace. I think the example of the tinder swindler, which is I mean, why name right? Is it he's not he's not a particularly nice individual. I don't really want to give him the neck that catchy but here we are. Thank you Netflix for that one. The column text he used was that somebody was threatening his life.