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Thoughts on FF Scammers and Trolls, the Death of Craigslist Oh, My!
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Thoughts on FF Scammers and Trolls, the Death of Craigslist Oh, My! Craigslist Personals went away a couple of weeks ago, you may have heard Congress passed a bill aimed at getting after , an admirable goal. The law is turning out to be a shotgun where a rifle is needed, Craigslist just shut down *all* personals rather than having to deal with the small number of ads. The far larger problem on Craigslist, however, was that it had been taken over in the past few years by huge numbers of spammers and fakes. I did an in-depth, detailed study a few years ago, and found at that time that roughly 92% of the W4M Casuals ads in Craigslist were duplicated word for word in dozens of cities, not merely in the US but in all of the English-speaking countries. LOL, you couldn't be the same chick, want sex that same night, and be in all those cities at the same time! And oh, how they wanted you to text them, send them a personal email, so they could collect your phone number and email addy, sell those to third party marketers. Why does this matter here on FriendFinder, and why today? Because all of those trolls and spammers have been chased out of most of their swimming pools, and are busy looking for new places to swim. FF didn't shut down, so now it's a ripe target. Actually, FF is not the target, you and I are. There has been a huge uptick in fake profiles on FF in the past few weeks. There has always been a small number, but I am getting 2,3, 4 flirts a day now, - Flirts are the common way to go for the spammers, they are unlimited, don't cost a penny, a single click of the mouse and dang, what's not to like? Spammers also use Instant Messaging, I suspect because it's harder to track and trace. A high percentage of my IM traffic is fake, and besides that, IM is extremely unreliable and buggy, so I just don't use it all. But spammers will also just show up in your "Who's Viewed You" list, quietly figuring you'll notice and write to them. How can you spot a spammer? I can offer clues for guys, maybe less for women, since I haven't paid a lot of attention to guys' profiles (lol!) I'm using a trick I learned on Craigslist, explained below. You have to understand first, a spammer wants to maximize his or her fishing chances, but minimize the labor. So once the spammer has put in the effort to write up a nice bullshit profile paragraph or two, he/she wants to use it over and over again - in different profiles, and on different dating sites. In Craigslist land, you could just repost the same ad text over and over again in different cities. Doesn't work as well on FF like that, BUT I *AM* FINDING FF PROFILES WITH DIFFERENT PICS, AGES, CITIES but SAME DESCRIPTIONS. Hmmm. You can't search on profile text in FF. But you can in Google Search, more on that below.. For men, the fake ads seem mostly to come out of Russia and the Ukraine, judging by the language used (Hmmm, how, odd...) and have descriptive bio's and text that are highly romanticized.. They don't talk about sex, they talk about love, LTR's romance, searching for fine, upstanding men. Here's a couple of samples: "I am a very romantic and caring woman who is madly in love with life. Yes, I am a hopeless optimist who always believes in the best," "I am kind, caring, with a good sense of humor. I am charming, curious, sensual, and I like to spend time actively, meet with my friends" Sounds good, right? Well. Copy and paste one or another of those sentences and a half into Google Search, put a quote mark on the front and the back to keep it whole, and click SEARCH. You'll pop up the same sentence and a half anywhere from ten to twenty times, on a bunch of different websites. And if you can get into the website, the pics will be totally different, the locations will be different, and the ages. Doesn't take a rocket scientist, just a little detective work when you're suspicious. And be suspicious of the language. The Russian and Ukrainian languages (I took two years of Russian once upon a time) do not contain the word "a"... so you frequently will see sentences like "I am happy lady" or "I am friendly person". So a spammer whose native tongue is Russian, not English, may not know or notice, but we sure do! Even the "I" sometimes disappears. Am just being cautious guy here. Here's from an FF profile who flirted with me: "I can say that I am matured, independent and hardworking person." Note the missing "a", and the stilted language. If you copy and paste this into Google search, at least at the time of writing this blog, you get entries on multiple websites, including: www.foreignladies.com in the Phillipines, www.foreignladies.com in South Bend Indiana, another separate profile on POF in Phoenix, AZ..... and on and on. You can report abuse to FF - supposedly. They don't seem to be doing much about it. And the profile might be CONFIRMED, it might actually be a paying member, doesn't matter. There's money to be made off of us, so investing a little isn't a big deal. And if it's a spammer paying FF $25/month to be a member, well, FF may not be in a hurry to get rid of them. I realize that most of the readers of my blog may be women. But don't doubt for a moment, you are targets as well. One of the best defenses on Craigslist, if you're in the same city, was asking if they were willing to meet up for coffee today or tomorrow. It's hard to do that when the spammer lives in Bulgaria, Pakistan, or Nigeria. There will always be an excuse, a reason they can't meet today. Ehhhhhhhhh. Sigh. WTF. Good luck! As always, love to hear your comments, it's important. The more comments posted, the higher this post sorts in the lists, and the more people see it. |
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Great post I will be following
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Yea, I get 2 to 3 flirts a week from 35yr olds that live in Canada, Poland, the U.S. They use the stilted language and the missing "a". I just ignore them all. The scammers will always try to lure someone. Nice post!
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"And if it's a scammer paying FF $25/month to be a member, well, FF may not be in a hurry to get rid of them" That and just getting a profile count in the millions so FF can say they have the biggest community farewell CL, RIP
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I've received a few emails that want to communicate off site. Yeah, sure. Not happening. I have my doubts when a twenty something wants a LTR with me.
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Sooner or later, you may want to go offsite with email... but later is far better, and you wanna use a special email addy not connected with anything else..
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I am sometimes asked if I am a American because of how I type. Broken English. Mostly in chat I do that. At another site my profile is according to a few not correct English. If they believe I am not American they can just slip my profile. Move on to the next one. Simple. Humans are the most dangerous animals on earth. If only animals had the ability to know when to keep away from us humans they would be better off.
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You know, I fully recognize the danger of stereotyping here. We are a land of immigrants, always have been, and hopefully always will be. There is no doubt that genuine people may get confused with a scammer.. What I'm recommending is that people do a Google search when they see some language that raises a question - see if that same sentence shows up in other profiles on other dating websites, with users who don't live in the same city, are not the same age, don't have similar photos. It's the best way to spot a fake. There has to be clear evidence. If it makes you feel better - I would never suspect you were fake, your language may bother you or someone else, but it is very genuine in what it expresses, and on top of that, you're willing to talk about your sexuality - most of the fakes don't talk about sex, they talk about highly romantic love. By the way, I totally agree with you, Humans *are* the most dangerous animals on earth!
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