Scammers on Online Dating Sites

Monica Whitty discusses her recent work on dating scams, which has focused on attempting to identify a typology of victims, recognizing the techniques used by scammers, and also the psychological impact of the scams themselves. Monica Whitty discusses her recent ESRC funded work on dating scams, aided by SOCA, various online dating agencies, and victim support groups. This work has focused on attempting to identify a typology of victims, as well as to recognize the techniques used by scammers, and the psychological impact of the scams themselves. She tells Bernie Hogan about the extraordinary sums of money fraudulently obtained through these scams, and also highlights the long lasting effects felt by many victims. Because of the intimate nature of these crimes, she discusses strategies for creating more effective forms of awareness, as well as mechanisms for automatically alerting people to the potential for an online interaction being fraudulent.