How to block scammers from communities?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 16 Oct 2008 Posts: 1

Hi,

We run a dating site that is very clean regarding scams indeed - but that isn't enough!

I need some advice on what we can do to completely block out any African visitors as they, unfortunately, are involved in around 99% of the fake profiles we have on the site.

Any ideas on what measures to take? We are a local dating site and actually only need regional IP access (South America in this case)

Thank you in advance for any advice you may have.

Mathias

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 7:43 pm

I'm sorry to hear your site is plagued with scammers. I'm also surprised that, in your experience, the scammers are limited to African countries. We find that romance scammers come from all over the world.

If you are focused on a particular region and do not serve members from some countries, I suppose you could block IPs from countries that are outside of your focus. If you are global, I think it would be very unfortunate to discriminate against entire populations because of the small percentage who are engaged in criminal activity.

Perhaps a better solution would be to warn new and current members about scams and teach them how to spot them.

Edit to add: There is a good overview of love scams on our sister site www.ScamWarners.com. You could steer your members there: Click.

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:32 pm

Hey there, welcome here.
Now you got my attention, that's an interesting problem.
I guess it's a free date site ? And you make your money with clicks, so you want visitors to bring in the cash.
I have helped two while learning what could go wrong. I haven't found the right solution but the problem is interesting I think.

First website -- The looker sites, we got moderator status and started deleting fake/scam profiles by the thousands, partly on IP#'s, changing IP#'s, place of origin and behavior. Did we get them all? No, but 98% is gone and 30 new ones knock on the door every day and have to be deleted asap. All a baiter needs is about 30-45 minutes to seed the members with messages where he asks them to come and chat on yahoo. As he can study the member list while not logged in, he can prepare everything and by copy and paste seed up to about a hundred in that time. So 24/7 surveillance would be nice to make that time as short as possible.
After deleting thousands of fake members it's getting quiet there, often when I go there, there's nobody online on all the four sites. The hard core members are closer and form a block against a possible scammer so that doesn't really help to feel at home for new members either.

Second website -- The owner thought about making a quick buck, but wouldn't give out any rights to people willing to help, baiters can still find scammers then, but it is a slow process, once found, we could email the owner who wasn't online much so he could delete the scammers. If the word gets out and you don't pay attention 24/7 the same scammer(s) will make as many member profiles as needed, seed the real members and disapear to wait on yahoo if they had some success. And create a new member the next day to seed again. One IP# could lead to up to 100+ fake members. So deleting one time members keeps part of the records clean. As the owner didn't have enough time this ended bad and he had to shut the site down within four months.
The best solution I have found online while hunting for scammers email addy's is http://www.cafetropic.com/ they monitor everything, if in doubt, a member they don't trust gets a remark on his profile that warns possible victims. They check email and IP#, pictures need to be approved. Scammers can log in, read, but can't send messages and their profile is hidden for normal users. By paying a smal fee you can upgrade your account with extra safety and contact features and scammers don't even bother the members then.
No I don't have a ready solution, but it's an interesting thing to try to figure out especially as that group is very vulnerable for scammers as some members of the eater here have experienced. Yep me too Embarassed

If .... drop me a note, got time and wouldn't mind helping out.

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