I found myself on a dating site recently getting messaged by a young lady with a cool, yet tragic story. We chat for a day or so and being inherently skeptical I do some casual snooping around the internet and can't find anything. Monday she sends a flirty picture and I get really curious. So I do a reverse phone search and scrounge the back corners of Facebook and things get *curiouser.* I find a Facebook page with a couple pics and 0 friends. Very suspicious!
So another day goes by and I innocently ask questions about the weird stuff on the Facebook profile...and she sends another picture. But she's in a gym...and as we all know gyms have been closed for months. So finally I go back to my reverse image search and score a hit--the scammer has been using an internet model (I should have caught it sooner!). This morning I sent the scammer pix of themselves and compliment their outfit--and reported them to dating sites and Facebook.
It's sad that you have to be that paranoid...and maybe not everyone is out to get you...but enough are to make it worthwhile. So anyway, long story short, do a little homework before jumping into anything