4 simple dating website safety rules

We decided to dedicate this post to a few basic rules that will hopefully help people not to fall victim to fraud and scam artists. Even though these rules would seem relatively obvious, we would like to once again ask you to review them.

1. Never, under any circumstances, send money to strangers.

You may receive obvious spam emails, like this one:

or they could be emails written in a more resourceful manner intended for long-term communication. Users of the Loveprix.com  website received over 10,000 of such messages in three months. Typically, these accounts are immediately blocked and removed. However, a scam artist can correspond with you for a long time, send photos that are supposedly theirs, and then at some point (usually unexpectedly) ask you to transfer money to them under some pretext, for example:

 - to obtain a visa

- their family member is seriously ill, and they need help

- to deal with an unexpected difficult life situation

Loveprix team recommends that you DO NOT TRANSFER MONEY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, do not succumb to any type of persuasion and report such suspicious cases to the website support service (please use the "Report user" button on the user’s page). If you transfer money to them, this person will most likely stop all correspondence with you, and it will be impossible to establish their identity. You will not be able to get your money back.

2. Never send compromising photos.

If you send images that may compromise you to the other party, you must be fully aware that they can be published by them somewhere else. If this is of no significant relevance to you - then it is not going to make much difference. Otherwise we recommend that you refrain from sharing such photos.

Photo by Анастасия Гепп from Pixabay

Blackmailing people and threatening that their explicit photos will be published or sent to the victim’s relatives or friends has recently become one of the most widely used methods of extortion. Criminals often use dating websites in order to obtain such photographs.

If somebody asks you to send them explicit pictures, first think about how you would react if it were published.

3. Do not store sensitive data on your phone

We consider the mobile phone to be the most vulnerable location for storing information. This is the worst place to store sensitive private photos and generally any compromising personal information. There are plenty of situations where the contents of your phone may end up in the hands of criminals, both intentionally and accidentally, for example:

- if your device is lost or stolen

- remote hacking

- hacking of "cloud" data storage, where photos are automatically uploaded to from your phone.

Photo by unsplash-logovipul uthaiah

Police and intelligence services may have the technical means for extracting information from the phone remotely, as well as by means of physical access to the device. Loveprix.com suggests you assume that all the information stored on your phone can be remotely read, if somebody really wants to do it, even if the device is turned off, and in some cases, even with a switched-off battery.

4. Never give in to blackmail.

If you nevertheless became a victim of blackmail, you are definitely free to act as you see fit. However, we advise that you do not to give in to demands to pay criminals the money. Most likely, your photos in any case can be used by criminals if they deem it profitable to do so. We believe that in this situation, it would be wise to contact the police, while retaining all the correspondence between you and the blackmailers.

Photo by Kirill Averianov from Pixabay

Do not take the situation too close to heart. There is a massive amount of explicit content on the Internet. If for some reason your photos end up online, it is unlikely that they will attract the attention of the audience, and if they do attract any attention, it will likely be for a very brief period of time. The history of the Internet knows many cases when compromising photos and videos were published, including those of many famous people - movie stars, politicians, etc. At various times, sex scandals have even involved presidents of the largest countries. Most of these stories are usually quickly forgotten. Even if your photos are discussed across the entire Internet today, it is most likely that no one will remember about them in a week or two.

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