People looking for love online are being warned to stay vigilant amid a new wave of romance scams, with victims losing £4,000 on average. Finance experts Nerdwallet said research from Barclays Bank had found a 60% rise in the amount of money lost in the last quarter.
A romance scam is when someone pretends to be interested in starting a romantic relationship with a fellow dater online, gaining their trust and eventually conning them out of their money. According to the bank’s research, people aged 51 to 60 are most at risk, accounting for 35% of all money lost to romance scams.
Brean Horne, a personal finance expert at NerdWallet, has listed her top tips on how to spot and avoid a scam:
Spelling mistakes or inconsistencies
Poorly worded texts or emails with multiple misspellings, awkward syntax, and grammatical errors is usually an indication of a scam. Any legitimate message from a company would have been proofread and should be easy to read.
An urgent tone or message that requests immediate action
A scam message often prompts recipients to act instantly and has a tone that implies emergency action is required. This is to play on the emotions of the person receiving the message and encourage them to take action and respond.
Asking for sensitive information
Email, text and phone scams often ask for some form of sensitive information, whether it’s financial information like bank details, or login passwords and secret answers to security questions on various personal accounts.
The opening address
Scam emails and texts will often address the receiver in a way that might appear strange or uncommon. This could be through vague forms of addressing the victim, through names like Sir, Madam, Miss, or Mr because they either don’t have the recipient's personal information or in order to copy and paste the message to multiple people for ease. Another standout way to spot a scam email is if the email refers to the receiver by email address, for example, dear user@gmail.com.
Do not click on any links
With so many scam emails and texts slipping through the net and onto recipients' smartphones and inboxes, it’s important that those receiving them never click on any links inside the message. That’s because these links can open and download Malware onto the device which can not only steal personal information but also slow down the device.
Make sure to report spam texts or emails
Any suspicious or fraudulent messages can be forwarded and reported to 7726, a free service that looks into fighting scams.
