This is the second part of Priscilla's column, published in the Mossel Bay Advertiser last week, 23 February, about romance scams on the internet.
To avoid internet scams and avoid making financially disastrous mistakes, here are a few pointers:
1. Ideally, don't engage in online chats with people you don't know, or with whom you have no mutual friends. If you find that you have mutual friends, contact them, and find out if they do in fact know the person.
2. Keep your social media security settings as tight as possible. If you don't know how, there will be someone you know in real life that can help.
3. If you've already started chatting with someone online or connected on a dating site, remember former US President, Ronald Reagan's words: "Trust, but verify". In today's age, it's quite easy to do a reverse image lookup with Google Lens.
4. Watch the semantics. Scammers will often use terms of endearment, such as "Darling", "Love", "Wife", "Soulmate", and "my world" in their communications – all to create a false sense of security in their victims. They will also further draw their victims in by mirroring what they've been told – if the victim for example says, "I pray you'll be here soon", the reply will be in the lines of "God will bring it about, my Love". They will also prefer to text, rather than call, send voice notes, or video chat.
5. Check their social media profiles: Who are their friends? How many friends do they have? When did they join the platform? What is their relationship status? (I am not saying all scammers will say they're widowed, but they often do). What line of work are they in? (Jobs favoured by scammers tend to be (but are not limited to being) in the military, architects, and engineers).
6. Don't send any money to anyone you have never met. Scammers will often ask for money to be 'cash sent' to a cell phone number, because they cannot be reversed once the money has been drawn, and they're almost already waiting at the ATM's to draw the cash. This is especially true when "the love of your life" has told you they're banged up abroad – if that was true, why do they need you to send money within South African borders?
7. Don't send tech items either. Scammers have managed to convince their victims they need cell phones or laptops (often the latest, most expensive models), but insist that the items must be delivered to a "friend" of the receiver, or by using a contactless drop-point, such as a courier locker, or PO Box. Why? There have been instances where tech items supplied by unsuspecting victims have been used by the scammers for criminal activities.
8. Don't share pictures – not of your family, and certainly not of your young children or grandchildren. Human (including child) trafficking is real! Once you have sent an image, you have no assurance that it is not being sent on to someone else or manipulated into something pornographic. Also, as tempting as it may be to "prove how much you love them", don't send nude photographs, because scammers often use such images are used to extort money from the sender, threatening that the images will be posted online if they don't pay up. It is called sextortion.
9. Don't share personal information, such as where you live, where you work, when you're away on holiday etc. You're putting a big, red, flashing target on your back.
And lastly…
10. Using an example from the excuses above, why would anyone need to pay R250 to be "released from detention for an expired passport" when you're in the UK?
Would the British authorities not simply have deported him back to South Africa on the first available flight, given that he was in the country illegally?
And even if there was some kind of "penalty", surely it would have been in British pounds, not rands. So, stop being stubborn. If almost everyone around you is tell you that you're being scammed, listen to them. They are outside of your altered reality; they see things you've become conditioned to be blind to.
