57% of women on dating apps believe online dating isn’t safe (Essence). Only 48% of all US adults feel online dating is even somewhat safe (SSRS/Pew). Yet 80 million Americans continue using dating apps (SSRS, 2026) — navigating a trust gap in online dating that the industry has failed to close. The trust gap in…
Most dating safety advice focuses on catching scammers online — but what happens when a scammer actually shows up? The signs of a romance scammer in person are different from the digital red flags you’ve been taught to watch for, and recognizing them could mean the difference between a safe first date and a devastating…
WhatsApp is where romance scams go to die — or rather, where they go to kill. The moment a dating app match says “let’s move to WhatsApp,” the scam shifts from reconnaissance to active exploitation. Understanding romance scam signs on WhatsApp is critical because WhatsApp is the platform where 90%+ of romance scam financial losses…
Deepfake dating scams have crossed the line from theoretical threat to daily reality. In 2026, scammers use AI-generated faces to build fake profiles, voice cloning to make phone calls as someone they’re not, and real-time face-swapping technology to appear on video calls as an entirely different person. The result is a new breed of dating…
Fewer than 5% of romance scam victims ever report to authorities (FTC, 2026), and 55% never report anywhere at all (AARP, Feb 2026). That silence costs billions — it allows 630,000+ cybercriminals (SpyCloud, Feb 2026) to operate with near-total impunity while romance scam losses exceed $1.3 billion annually in the US. Knowing how to report…
It’s the question that haunts every romance scam victim long after the money is gone: can a romance scammer fall in love with the person they’re deceiving? The answer matters deeply — not because it changes the financial reality, but because it determines how you process the emotional devastation. With romance scam losses exceeding $1.3…
With 80 million Americans actively using dating apps (SSRS, 2026) and romance scam losses exceeding $1.3 billion annually (FTC, 2026), the question of why do scammers target dating apps has a deceptively simple answer: because they work. Dating apps concentrate the largest pool of emotionally available, trust-willing people on the internet — and the structural…
AI romance scams have fundamentally changed how online dating fraud works — and 2026 is the year the threat became impossible to ignore. According to McAfee’s February 2026 Valentine’s Research, 1 in 4 Americans have encountered a fake profile or AI bot on a dating app (McAfee, Feb 2026). AI bots can now send 60+…
The pig butchering romance scam is the fastest-growing fraud category in the world — a devastating scheme that combines romance manipulation with fake investment platforms to drain victims of their life savings. The name comes from the Chinese term “shā zhū pán” (杀猪盘), describing how scammers “fatten the pig before slaughter” by building deep emotional…
