“I think there’s a lot of people looking for love and looking for a relationship and these scammers know exactly how to emotionally manipulate people,” she said. Ms Rickard said Facebook was a hotbed for romance scams, closely followed by dating apps such as Tinder. “I don't think Tinder was even on our radar a year ago, but we have certainly seen over 200 reports and a million dollars lost in scams via people connecting on Tinder.” They’ve cost users $1 million.ĭeputy Chair of the ACCC, Delia Rickard, said these types of scams work unbelievably well. One million dollars lost on Tinder ScamsĪccording to the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, scams on dating apps have gone from 4 per cent in 2015, to 11 per cent in January this year. “They have a script that they work with and based on your response, they will spit out a more generic line and then be like, ‘Hey do you want to chat with me on another app and then we can talk more intimately’.”īut it can also be more sophisticated than that. “It’s pretty much a lady robot talking to you,” Spandas said.

The profile is usually controlled by a “chatbot” that will ask generic questions and try and move the user off the dating app as quickly as possible. “A lot of times they will gain your trust and then they will fake their identity and ask for cash.” “Catfishing is when someone assumes a fake identity to build a relationship,” Spandas told Hack. Nicole’s story is familiar to LifeHack tech writer Spandas Lui who has been researching the rise of fake profiles on online dating apps, known commonly as ‘Catfishing’. She now has a message to the scammers: “If you’re out there and you’re catfishing someone or you’re using my photos, could you please stop.” Catfishing on Tinder Nicole has written to Tinder to ask for the profile to be taken down, but has not heard back. “A lot of people were saying it's a compliment that they have chosen your photos but I think it’s the creepiest thing you can ever do and I find it really a huge invasion of my privacy,” Nicole said. It’s likely Nicole’s photos were taken by scammers to trap an unsuspecting user who thought she was good looking and had swiped right. “I felt quite violated that someone had gone onto my Instagram and gone through all these images to create a fake profile,” she said.

The pictures had been taken from Nicole’s public Instagram account that she had posted about a year ago.

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