Dating online may be one of the clearest examples of the mistakes we all make as individuals and as companies when using the internet.  According to private investigators in Russia, the dangers of a careless use of the web can be found nearly anywhere, from social media sites to a simple internet search. Sadly, dating websites have been the major exponents of most of these risks and the recent scandal of the Ashley Madison hack is a proof.

In some cases, an online dating scammer may remotely activate your webcam even without your knowledge!  Investigators say it’s wise to cover your web cam with tape when not in use.

A big part of the discussion of the Ashley Madison hack so far has focused on karma and whether or not the users of this website deserved being exposed. For those who may not be so familiar with this particular website, its main goal was to help people find an affair online, or as they called it, a casual discreet encounter between married people. In the last few months this dating website has been the focus of attention of millions of people around the world due to a cyber-attack where the personal information, emails, passwords and credit card information of its users was stolen.

A lot has been said about how careless the users were, and how being exposed would be a lesson not to cheat anymore. But little has been said about the main focus of the attack. Beyond the moral issues of infidelity, there are two main topics: online safety and online privacy.

Talking about the first issue, online safety, hackers accuse the dating site of creating false profiles to attract more users.  According to Wired Magazine, the hackers unveiled what many had intuited in the past but had failed to prove: the scam behind fake profiles in dating sites. The perpetrators state that they  found thousands of fake female profiles, and that 90 to 95 percent of the real users of Ashley Madison´s website were male. Part of the statement says “Chances are that your man signed up on the world´s biggest affair site, but never had one”, insinuating that they had actually been deceived by someone with a false account.  False profiles on dating websites is nothing new.

Whether or not the company is involved in creating the false profiles to make their business grow, there is one thing that stands out. It seems to be obvious how people are easily trapped online by criminals claiming to be someone else, and this is particularly evident in dating websites. Nobody is screened before joining any dating website, which means a big percentage of the profiles you can find might be scam. How safe can it be to provide personal information to a stranger online? Not safe at all, but most dating site users do it all the time.  Every day a new case of Russian online dating scam proves how anyone can open an account in a dating site and how not caring to verify and not being careful of the information we share is the cause of thousands of victims of online crimes.

The other issue is even more obvious and it has to do with online privacy. The users of the Ashley Madison website had to learn it the hard way. You might be extremely careful about the information you share with other users, but what about the information the company itself holds of you? When you create a profile, companies are storing this data for future use in marketing efforts, advertisement, etc. The consequences of losing all this information can be catastrophic for each individual victim, as it was for the company.  Be safe and share less information on the internet.

Who is really behind all the dating scams? Are organized crime rings working on their own on all these love frauds or are they being sponsored by the dating websites themselves? Many questions are rising from this situation, and probably there will not be clear answers to them anytime soon. Investigators from Russia PI say that what is important is that people should be aware of the risks they face when using carelessly the internet, particularly the dating websites. Share as little as possible, use email addresses that are exclusive for dating online purposes, use safe payment methods like PayPal, and get a dating background check when you think you have found someone real.

C. Wright
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