Love on the Internet

Looking for love on the Internet has become popular in recent years with sites like match.com and eharmony.com, but finding love on the internet has its downfalls. People are very trusting in relationships that are created over the internet before they have met the other individual. Match.com provides tips for users on protecting themselves from users who may not be on the site to look for love. Some scammers are able to form a relationship with a user and might spend 6-8 months talking with them on the computer and phone, but in the end ask for money. The process starts off slowly so that the user doesn’t realize they are being scammed, the individual might ask for $500 dollars to repair his car or for a new pair of work boots, then the scammer might ask for money because he/she was in an accident. Be very leary of an individual that asks for money online or asks for a lot of your personal information like your home address, birth date or social security number. The internet crime report indicated that over $239 million dollars was stolen with internet fraud last year. There is a new online site to help victims of romance fraud, romancescams.org, since the site’s debut in 2005, it has already built a 30,000 person user base.