More irritating than dangerous, spamming is the act of sending unwanted commercial advertising material as electronic junk mail, known as spam. Soliciting is the act of urging someone to buy something. If you’re being spammed or solicited by someone you’ve met through an online dating service, cease contact with that person and report their behavior as inappropriate.

Hopefully you will have set up a separate email account for online dating use, as advised in Getting Started, so it will be easy to quarantine the spammer’s emails. Otherwise most email service providers have so-called junk filters or spam blockers to keep the trash out of your inbox.

Scams are more serious because the perpetrators are more sophisticated and the stakes higher, both financially and emotionally. There are many different variations of online dating scams but generally a scammer posts fake profiles on online dating services, befriends online dating users and manipulates their emotions with the aim of extracting money from the victim. Sometimes scammers might even steal your details and use your identity to scam other members.

Reputable online dating services have safety checks in place in an attempt to verify the legitimacy of member’s profiles but scammers can still slip through using photos downloaded from the internet and fake profiles. While many scammers come from Russia, Eastern Europe and Africa and target men there is no concrete format. Anyone can be the target of a scammer and anyone that asks for money IS a scammer.

Please read about the Top 10 Scams, Identity Theft, Russian Scams, African Scams and True Scam Stories and Letters for detailed information about the most common online dating scams. Information, education and vigilance are the best forms of protection against online dating scammers and the golden rule is NEVER SEND MONEY TO SOMEONE YOU’VE MET ONLINE.