In February 2024, Bumble, a famous dating application decided to employ Artificial Intelligence to protect its users from Catfishing and other identity fraud. The decision was made under the concerns of rising threat of online romance scams and catfishing scams. Yet many fraudsters go undetected and never get caught in the first place. Sometimes they manage to jack millions of dollars from wealthy and lonely individuals. This is why regulators and cyber security officials have declared catfish illegal in most of the jurisdictions.
Many countries still don’t embrace it as a crime in itself, rather they consider the associated action of catfishing such as extortion, cyber bullying, and sexual image manipulation as crimes.
Let’s try to explore the answers to why catfishing is illegal and how can a person prevent it while dating online.
Overview of Catfishing
Catfishing is an online activity that includes creation of fake online profiles and persona in order to connect to different people mostly for illicit gains.
Types of Online Catfishing Scams
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Romantic Catfishing
A scammer may create an attractive profile on social media or a dating website. All or a few details in a profile can be fake. Fraudsters will prey on the lonely and potentially wealthy individuals who seek affectionate love and need a life partner. Once the relationship starts, the scammers lure the victim with their lovely talks and promises for life. After gaining full trust they carry out their illicit activity and cause harm to the victim in terms of trust, monetary loss, sexual manipulation, and etc
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Financial Catfishing
A catfisher may also pose himself or herself as someone in need of financial aid. Sometimes they pose as an orphan, a forced runaway or a person in need of an education loan. They may also offer to pay it back after sometime but in reality they intend to flee away with your hard earned money.
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Revenge Catfishing
Vengeance ignites a desire to harm someone in any way possible. This results in individuals seeking revenge through Catfishing where people may create fake profiles and harm the reputation of targeted individuals or companies.
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Child Predator Catfishing
It is one of the most harmful and dangerous types of catfishing that can harm innocent children. That’s why parents and caretakers must be aware of children’s online activities and protect them from falling prey to any catfishing attempt.
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Identity Theft Catfishing
This type of catfishing enables fraudsters to steal the identity credentials of people through catfishing tactics of anysort. This is used to illegally access anyone’s accounts or other sensitive information.
Havocs of Catfishing
Catfishing causes the following damages to individuals and companies online.
- Loss of trust on the social platform.
- Loss of finances
- Psychological damage
- Insecurity and Data Loss
- Identity Losses and false rejection in identity systems
Is Catfishing a Crime?
In many regulated states in the US catfishing is considered a crime due to being a deceptive act of impersonation and fake identity creation. In Florida it is a punishable crime to make a fake identity and carry out catfishing.
How to Prevent Catfishing?
Preventing catfishing is very important for overall protection of your digital online presence. Whether you intend online dating or it is your business activities, catfishing is a threat that can cost you everything. To prevent it, follow these tips and safeguard your online identities from catfishers.
- Implement strong identity verification methods including multi-factor authentication using facial biometric verification and identity document verification for strengthening the identity filters. This will make it near to impossible for fraudsters to hack or crack your credentials protecting your online accounts.
- Use strong passwords and security questions on dating websites and never share your personal profile pictures with suspicious and unwanted people online.
- Never share your personal information, including your name, date of birth, account number, cell number on dating websites.
- Regularly update your security credentials and remain in contact with regulators somehow to keep them informed and updated about your online activities.
- Report any suspicious person like if someone tries to lure you into an offer that is not genuine and seems fraud to regulators immediately.
How Facial Recognition System can Protect you from Catfishers?
Suppose you want an online business meeting with a person who has a seemingly lucrative business offer. You choose to meet the person remotely through an online video calling platform to confirm the identity of the person and that the offer is genuine. If you implement facial recognition software in the back end, it will help you identify any deepfake or fraudulent identity within seconds. You can set the meeting protocols of the meeting. Let’s say you can make it mandatory for the person to verify his identity and liveness promptly. Or your third party identity solution can do this activity for you at the back end while you can smoothly start the video call.
Once the identity and liveness is verified, the identity solution can prompt you to carry on with the meeting or it can automatically cut the call if there’s suspicious activity.
Final Thoughts
Using a fast and accurate identity solution for protecting users from catfishers is a best practice for businesses and individuals. Always prefer an identity solution with high liveness verification speed and lowest false acceptance rate. Facia offers both these attributes ensuring liveness check in under one second and 0% false acceptance rate.
