Adam Levin:
Adam. Wait a minute. Am I talking to myself here? Hello?
Travis Taylor:
Hello?
Adam Levin:
What. Beau?
Beau Friedlander:
Travis, if you do that again, I swear I’m going to lose my mind. That’s me you were just, you just stole my identity.
Travis Taylor:
I really just did. Yep.
Beau Friedlander:
Wow.
Adam Levin:
Travis.
Travis Taylor:
Yes.
Beau Friedlander:
I’m leaving. I’m done. You two are confusing me and I’m just way too tired for this, but, okay.
Adam Levin:
So listen, following up on a mark last episode of What the Heck, Beau you were involved in a deep exchange with a scammer.
Beau Friedlander:
I well, deep, deep, deep.
Adam Levin:
Have you heard back from Thomas?
Beau Friedlander:
No. Deep, I wish it were deep. I tried Adam. I really tried. I tried to get him to trust me. I have all the hallmarks of a failed confidence man. This guy won’t have anything to do with me. And I offered him as you know, we offered him five grand. Come on the show. Tell us all your shop secrets, bupkis, crickets, nothing from this guy.
Adam Levin:
I hear rumors that you have been jousting with a scammer
Beau Friedlander:
Thomas Davis.
Adam Levin:
Thomas.
Beau Friedlander:
He won $390 million in a lottery. And so he got in touch with me because he wanted to spread his money around to people who needed it. Would you be on our show about scammers, I promise not to turn you in, which we could do since we have worked with a retired secret service agent and a white hat hacker with close ties to the letter agencies. I just want to interview an authentic small time swindler.
Adam Levin:
All right. I got a plan. The plan is.
Beau Friedlander:
What is it?
Adam Levin:
Let Travis take a shot at Thomas.
Beau Friedlander:
Oh, he is a doubting Thomas, Travis.
Travis Taylor:
He does sound like it. He also used the term lol pretty often, which is a immediate conversation editor for me.
Adam Levin:
So Beau, I’ve been wanting to ask this question, Travis and I talk about it privately when you’re not around, but-
Beau Friedlander:
Yeah.
Adam Levin:
Why do you like to troll the trolls or scam the scammers as much as you do?
Beau Friedlander:
Oh my God. I can’t think of anything better. It’s so fun. It’s when I was a kid, the first dangerous thing I ever did was just brush my finger through candle flame, and I wouldn’t get hurt and I’d be like, see, I didn’t get hurt. I’d be fine. And then I graduated to riding a motorcycle on a stonewall and I did get hurt. So trolling the trollers and scamming the scammers to me is like the middle road between riding a motorcycle on a stonewall and putting your finger through, quickly through the flame of a candle.
Adam Levin:
How much is it because it’s fun or how much is it because you’re trying to learn something?
Beau Friedlander:
I’m always trying to learn something. So I’m careful when I do it, I am very careful and it’s fun because they’re often not that bright. And so you can… it’s a bit like, yeah, putting a mountain troll in a paper bag and shaking it. It’s fun. And then, I guess that’s my not nice side. And then I guess I also like the thrill of it, because there’s always a chance they will get you. And since I know you Adam, I’m not too scared of getting got, because I know I have a get out of free or get out of hell free card with you.
Adam Levin:
Oh, I thought you were because you know Travis and me, you figure you’re going to get got by us anyway. So at least you might as well see if somebody else can do it.
Beau Friedlander:
And that’s how I got unscarred because you and Travis are. I mean, Travis has had my password since 1997. So what I mean I’ve got-
Adam Levin:
And he still looks at it in disbelief every day.
Travis Taylor:
It, yeah, that was shocking even as a teenager.
Beau Friedlander:
Now, but Travis, do you understand why I do it? Would you ever do it yourself?
Travis Taylor:
No.
Beau Friedlander:
Why not?
Travis Taylor:
Because I’m not the sort of person to either put my finger in a candle or ride a motorcycle on a stone wall.
Beau Friedlander:
What about you, Adam? What about you? Do you have… are you a danger mouse when it comes to this stuff? Are you absolutely scared as a mouse?
Adam Levin:
My beloved will tell you that I’m shall we say risk averse except in the stock market where that has been my downfall on so many different occasions.
Beau Friedlander:
Yeah. Well it must be fun.
Adam Levin:
The beauty of dealing with the stock market is it gives you an opportunity to be depressed almost every day of your life.
Beau Friedlander:
I mean, oh well, if you like depression.
Adam Levin:
Yeah.
Beau Friedlander:
Yeah. I mean, if that’s your thing. Yeah.
Adam Levin:
Do you think this interaction protocol you have with scammers has helped you stay safer online because of certain characteristics you see when you get involved in these give and takes?
Beau Friedlander:
Well, because I do it so much I actually just assume I’m always under attack and it does. Yeah. It protects you. If you behave as though you’re constantly being targeted, it’s harder to get got. And the fact of the matter is we’re all being constantly targeted.
Adam Levin:
No barrage but I do remember was either a TV show or a movie because you know me with TV shows and movies where someone managed by mistake to anger a hacker and they systematically took this person’s life apart piece by piece by piece.
Beau Friedlander:
They’re like yellow jackets. They really just they don’t give up and they’ll even, they’ll die in the process of getting you. They really just, maybe they’re not that bad, but-
Adam Levin:
Creative.
Beau Friedlander:
Travis.
Adam Levin:
Sophisticated, persistent.
Travis Taylor:
Yellow jackets continue and keep living.
Beau Friedlander:
Oh, which are the ones that die because they lose their stinger?
Travis Taylor:
Bees.
Adam Levin:
Bees.
Beau Friedlander:
Oh.
Adam Levin:
Welcome to What the Hack, a show about hackers, scammers and the people they go after. I’m Adam, the voice of cyber romance.
Beau Friedlander:
I’m Beau bullfrog hunter extraordinaire.
Travis Taylor:
And I’m Travis, the voice of cyber discomfort.
Adam Levin:
And today we’re talking all about romance scams with Yue Xu and Julie Krafchick, the hosts of the podcast Dateable.
Adam Levin:
Yue, Julie it’s so exciting to have you on the show. And I, again, so much appreciated the fact that you allowed me to come on Dateable and lower your digital property values for a relatively brief period of time.
Beau Friedlander:
It’s Yue, pronounce your name Yue?
Adam Levin:
Yes.
Beau Friedlander:
And you pronounce your name Jule?
Adam Levin:
Jule.
Julie Krafchick:
And we should change it to that. That would be the best.
Beau Friedlander:
Jule and Yue. That’ll be $5.
Julie Krafchick:
That’s our new branding. Thank you.
Adam Levin:
At the beginning of our conversation, when they were kind enough to allow me to come on Dateable that Yue and Julie also talked about the fact that there were other scams that they were exposed to. And so just as a way of getting to know you and getting to know your introduction to scams. For instance Julie, you were notified of college loans that you had with, was it UCLA?
Julie Krafchick:
It was UC Berkeley.
Adam Levin:
UC Berkeley. Yeah.
Julie Krafchick:
Ironically, I didn’t even have any college loans because it wasn’t undergrad program that I went to. It was a post certificate program and the scammers can get to you because I started to believe it in my head that I had loans that didn’t even exist.
Beau Friedlander:
Well, I mean, if you get a letter from, that’s one of my least favorite scams too. Because I hate, it’s a double whammy, you owe money which I don’t like and you didn’t know about it, which I really don’t like. And… but I assume it’s true. I always assume it’s true.
Adam Levin:
And then Yue had the experience where, how many times have we all picked up the phone and someone speaking in Chinese was talking to us and were going I have absolutely no idea what this person is saying. But almost unfortunately, Yue’s mom did understand what they were saying. And Yue, you basically went down and stopped her from taking money out of the bank to actually pay them.
Yue Xu:
So when we, my mom and I, traveled to Tibet and we went with a tour group and when you travel to Tibet, they take your, or at least this tour group took all of our passports and they saw that we had foreign passports. And what happened next was we got a phone call saying, we know you have foreign accounts. We know you have money elsewhere. You must report that amount or you’re going to get arrested. And I mean, it was true. We lived in the US, we had foreign accounts. So my mom freaked out. I wasn’t around at this time when she got the phone call and they were so slick about it. They said we were the Shanghai Police Department. You can Google our phone number, call us back and you’ll still get us. So she did that. She went on Google, found the number and called them. And it happened to still be them. It was a very elaborate scam. She was on the phone with them for over three hours and ended in at the ATM of her trying to withdraw money. And that’s when I stopped her.
Beau Friedlander:
Oh my gosh, that is, I love it. That sounds like a real-
Yue Xu:
You love it.
Beau Friedlander:
That sounds like a real five star scam.
Adam Levin:
Well, man, then when you talk about complicated scams and really professionally orchestrated scams, then we come to the whole world of dating scams. Which is perfect since we talked about this on Dateable.
Julie Krafchick:
Yes.
Adam Levin:
And as you folks said at the time we’re living in an era of the Tinder Swindler, Inventing Anna and the Bad Vegan. So I mean, it’s all around us, not to mention the fact how many people, we’ve had several people on the show that have talked about becoming victimized or at least catching themselves just before they became victims of dating scams.
Beau Friedlander:
Well, and Adam, we also, not to forget low key, we’ve heard really serious stories of people having their identity stolen and used on a dating app without their knowledge to in some cases even commit a crime. So it can get, it can be annoying. It can be saddening. It can be, oh my gosh, I’m never going to find the right person or it can be terrifying.
Adam Levin:
Have you guys ever experienced swindling and scamming on dating apps personally directed at you?
Julie Krafchick:
I think we both have had people that were definitely suspects, but we haven’t gotten to the point of passing over money. But it was really interesting because when we were doing this episode, I mean a big part of it you touched on it Adam, is there’s been so much media lately about scams, romance scams particularly the Tinder Swindler.
Speaker 6:
Man, who’s come to be known as the Tinder Swindler, thanks to the popular Netflix, true crime documentary.
Speaker 7:
Popular documentary that chronicles the woeful tales of three women who thought they’d met the man of their dreams on Tinder only to later say he scammed them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 8:
He’s now speaking out saying that nickname couldn’t be further from the truth.
Speaker 9:
I’m not a fraud and I’m not a fake, people don’t know me so they cannot judge me.
Julie Krafchick:
And when we were looking into it, actually in 2020, the second highest internet scam was romance scams. So they just shot up over time. And I think a big part of it was due the pandemic of a lot of people being on their phones and on the internet stuck in their home, not being able to maybe do other types of crimes in person. So it was just a huge rise in the last couple years.
Travis Taylor:
What’s the most common approach that you’ve seen?
Julie Krafchick:
Yeah. I mean we’ve seen a mult… there’s definitely very some extremes. So we’ve heard of, I think people were pa… handing over thousands of dollars to random strangers. And as soon as we put a post up in our community, we got back tons of people saying this has happened to me. And so we’ve seen it on the far end of these people that maybe have never even met in person. But they have given them some story and some feeling of connection to make it seem like they should be giving them money to help out. There’s always some huge issue that happens like in Tinder Swindler, right? He was caused for harm. So it’s like there’s always something that’s making this happen.
Julie Krafchick:
And then we’ve also seen a lower end one. And it’s interesting because what, and we’ve seen more women be suspect to romance scams where they’re falling for this big fairytale story. Where men, it’s more of a quick hit of like, let’s go to this chat room and put your credit card in so we could talk here first or I want to make sure that you’re safe so I’m going to verify your identity first. So you have to go to this site where you have to pay $50 to verify your identity or even we’ve heard of just quicker hits of, can you send me $50 for an Uber ride so I can meet you at the bar or restaurant we’re supposed to go to and spoiler alert they don’t show up.
Beau Friedlander:
Can I say Julie, if someone, I have two daughters and I am old fashioned enough that if I would say if they want you to pay for their Uber ride, it’s a bad sign. Just if, even if it’s not a scam, run, run.
Adam Levin:
No way no.
Beau Friedlander:
No way no. But Julie you have become, I’m guessing in the land of this podcast Dateable and your work in audio, you’ve become an expert on somewhat of a psychologist probably.
Julie Krafchick:
Yeah. You could say that. We like to believe that. Yes.
Beau Friedlander:
And so, how can… are there any hallmarks of a scammer versus a real Romeo? Are there things that they do differently that you’ve noted as a pattern?
Julie Krafchick:
I think what we’ve heard over and over again is if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. And in today’s world we want to believe that someone really love, really likes us and they want to do anything and they want to make us our universe even at the beginning. Because one of the things we hear from in dating is that it’s actually really hard to even get to a third date anymore. That people have so many options and they’re treating each other as disposable and all of the bad dating behavior. So when someone shows up strong for you you want to believe it’s true. But a lot of times when it’s too good to be true, this is when this starts to come in. And I think there’s always the sob story that’s part of it. And there’s always this element of a lot of attention and built trust that doesn’t actually exist yet.
Adam Levin:
In other words, this is where good dating behavior is really bad and bad behavior is normal.
Beau Friedlander:
I mean-
Julie Krafchick:
It’s unfortunate because we don’t want to discourage people from treating someone well. But I think we all know deep down when something feels like overkill versus someone gradually getting to know you. I think we want the romance, we want the big story. But also we have to recognize that this person’s a stranger and we haven’t earned that trust yet and they haven’t earned our trust. So when someone’s asking for all this stuff, even my partner of over a year, I feel if he came to me asking for a thousand plus dollars, it’d be like, well, what are you using this for? The fact that people are doing this after just a couple weeks of chatting online is… it’s crazy, but it’s obviously working or they wouldn’t do it.
Adam Levin:
In other words, when Beau comes to Travis and me and asked us for money for let’s say a tractor, should we be on the lookout for that?
Beau Friedlander:
That’s the stupidest question. I love you Adam. But stupid as in stupid, as in dizzy, as in a fly that’s woozy and flown around too much. Because one, I’ve known you since before dirt even existed. And I… so if I ask you for money, you didn’t… did you not know this? And Travis goes for you too and Yue and Julie, you just give it to me.
Adam Levin:
Oh.
Travis Taylor:
Okay. That sounds about right. That makes sense.
Beau Friedlander:
What’s wrong with you guys? Yue, I want hear, Yue I want to hear you chime in on the same exact point.
Adam Levin:
Yes. Yes.
Yue Xu:
I mean, I think it’s… we said it’s unfortunate that modern dating, we normalize bad dating behavior. So when someone experiences good dating behavior, they don’t know what to do with that information. And they, sometimes people do accept that behavior more. And so that’s why these con artists can really get to the vulnerability of people because everyone who is experiencing ghosting and lack of accountability on dating sites all of a sudden they’re this person’s paying attention to me. Yes, I will financially invest in this because this is not like anything I’ve ever experienced before.
Adam Levin:
Well, and we know that Beau’s true love, she didn’t believe him for a year and a half. And actually Travis and I thought that was fairly quick to give in.
Beau Friedlander:
Well, no, my kids actually… my kids and I think you Adam, if I’m not mistaken and I think Travis you too, I think I would say is this like friend zone? Or, and everyone was friend zone, friend zone, friend zone. And I kept insisting that I was seeing things that weren’t there and it took a year and a half of me courting for her to actually believe that I was serious.
Travis Taylor:
I do have to say it was pretty adorable how giddy you were when you first met her. You just called me and you’re like, I met this girl. It was really sweet.
Beau Friedlander:
I met her in the dog park too. And so my advice on the dating front has been get off the apps, get off the apps, go meet somebody doing something that you like doing. What do you guys think of that?
Julie Krafchick:
I mean, I’m impartial because I met my partner on an app. I think that there’s, I think that the apps are a great source to meet people you wouldn’t meet in real life. That being said, I think people have used apps as a crutch and they’re not doing what you just said to just meet people in a dog park anymore. So I don’t think it’s an either or, I think it can be both, but sometimes it just feels easier to just defer to the apps that we’re not flexing our social muscles. But also I think it’s just an element of our society when everyone’s has their earplugs in, in a park it’s really hard to approach people anymore. It needs to be a collective feeling of we’re going to try to meet in real life again, whether that’s romantic or not. But hopefully the pandemic can start to shift that because people have this real longing to have that human connection person.
Travis Taylor:
I think one of the main things that on my end is someone who has not been in the dating scene since I was a teenager, very happily so. Is how much blame do you think the dating apps or dating platforms themselves need to take for the scam environment?
Julie Krafchick:
I think this is a really good question because I’m not sure to be honest because on one side I feel their whole cell is that they’re just a connection platform and that they can’t really control the people on there. And it is hard because you don’t know who’s showing up. But then on the same time, because people are so reliant on dating apps, because it’s so challenging already adding this element now that you could not just get ghosted, but you could get scammed. It makes it a really scary place if you fall into that. So I do think the dating apps need a little more accountability. It’s really hard though because I know companies like Uber or TaskRabbit, where they’re independent contractors, they take a lot of safety precautions, right? There’s vetting and all that stuff, but it’s not really like these people are employees at all of Tinder, for instance, they’re just fellow users. So I don’t know. What do you all think? Do you think that they should be doing more?
Beau Friedlander:
I’m so glad that you asked. I think that there’s no doubt. First of all, the way some scammers or many scammers work on these dating apps is they have multiple profiles and they’re basically burn like burner phones. And when a scam goes sideways, they just close it down and move on to the next one. But they have several going at the same time. Is a dating app developer able to see that that’s happening, almost certainly in many cases they are. And the question becomes, do they have any incentive to get rid of fake accounts? Well, the same thing goes for Twitter. These platforms have a vested interest in their being fake accounts on their platforms because it makes them look bigger.
Travis Taylor:
I mean, I think the… one of the main examples that comes to mind too, outside of Twitter is Ashley Madison, the social app for having an affair there. But what… when that had a huge data breach, what they ended up finding out was that was loaded with fake accounts in the same way.
Adam Levin:
About 90% of them. Right?
Travis Taylor:
Right. Yeah. It made it look more popular. It made that more appealing for people who were actually going on there because they thought that there was a huge user base there and it ended up being mostly fraudulent.
Adam Levin:
But what’s interesting is about a year and a half after that disaster where you ended up having suicides and divorces and everything else, Ashley Madison was actually even more popular than it had been before this disaster. Yue what do you think about all this?
Yue Xu:
Listen, every social media site or app had fake users to start, because that’s how you grab people’s attention. Clubhouse had a wait list of thousands of people. Where they real people? Probably not. I think it just shows that the… it shows that there’s demand for this app and there’s this feeling of exclusivity. I don’t think we can blame the apps for the types of people who are on the apps, but the apps do need to take accountability for safety. And a lot of them are doing the best that they can. Ultimately I think it’s how humans are using these tools is to blame and not so much the technology itself because the technology is just going to keep iterating and keep progressing. And it’s up to us to use it in the most ethical way.
Julie Krafchick:
Yeah. I mean, this isn’t the… a dating app, but I recently got my Instagram hacked, not that long ago. And this person was sending random messages impersonating me and it was very violating. It felt like a violation of privacy. And-
Adam Levin:
Did you get it back?
Julie Krafchick:
I did. And the Instagram did take… get it back for me with within 24 hours. So once I found out how to do it, they had me take photos of myself from all different angles to verify it was actually me requesting my account back. So I did like their process, but I guess the part that I don’t understand is if they see this unrecognized device logging in from somewhere questionable where my account has never been before they see this person spaming other users on their site, you would think that they would at least hold the account until they could verify.
Julie Krafchick:
Because basically 24 hours I was getting, I was spaming all these people and that can’t be good for their site. I wish dating apps, if they’re not sure at least could do something because like you said, there is data that they have that they’re collecting.
Beau Friedlander:
Tell us the best, almost scam that you experienced on a dating app. Do you just get rid of them immediately?
Yue Xu:
I think it’s just reading, well, I feel like it was just so obvious to me. I’ve bought lots before and you asked the question and they answer was something totally unrelated. So real person, I probably would stop talking to them because they’re not really on point with anything that they’re saying, but a scam that I have been experiencing, I don’t know where this is going. And Adam, on our episode, I alluded to this is is on LinkedIn every day I get one or two requests on LinkedIn of very attractive Chinese men with made up profiles. I can tell they’re made up because their job functions are very strange. It’s like managing director of user. I don’t know what that means.
Beau Friedlander:
Yeah, neither do they.
Yue Xu:
Harvard MIT. And they have less than 200 connections. I don’t know where they’re going with this because I’ve collected on my phone at least 30 of these now, and I’m not, but-
Beau Friedlander:
We can tell you what that is. That is that’s called the count padding and Adam gets a ton of those where it’s just people who are in the midst of trying to create a believable, usable account in the commission of identity theft. So they have to collect as many followers as possible. That person with 200 connections will have a thousand in a couple weeks. And then it’ll become a little more believable. Yue what are… what when you… we were talking about you just swat these guys away, like it was nothing. What are would you say, the top three early warning signs of a person not being legit.
Yue Xu:
One with their photo looks like a stock photo. Doesn’t look real. Two, all of them had the same pattern of education. It was… they were educated in China first at a Beijing university. And then the next was at a Stanford, Harvard or MIT. They followed the same formula and many of them worked for these [inaudible 00:28:14] companies like the Facebook, an Apple and some of them even message me, but it’s incoherent. I mean, I don’t understand what they’re saying, but something like you’re magnificent, let’s connect. But I do wonder if they are using because now people are getting a little smarter on dating apps, verifying identities, is that are they using these identities on dating apps to scam people?
Adam Levin:
So Julia, may I ask you the same question now?
Julie Krafchick:
Yeah.
Adam Levin:
What are your top three warning sign? Because I… you’re I think you’re right. We’ve seen that, but both Travis-
Travis Taylor:
100%.
Adam Levin:
Have been trying to help me get my folks up. So yeah.
Beau Friedlander:
My top one is it’s Adam. Yeah.
Julie Krafchick:
I mean, I definitely think the biggest one is they want to take the convo to WhatsApp immediately, especially on dating apps.
Beau Friedlander:
Good one.
Julie Krafchick:
Because they don’t want the dating app to see their suspicious activity. I think that’s one piece, a lot of times they’re overseas. So just a text messaging won’t work so they need web-based text. And so I’d say that’s definitely number one. I remember there was a, when I was on dating apps, I was talking to someone once and probably what you, like Yue said, they had a stock photo or they were highly attractive. I was like, wow, this person’s really good looking. And then when I started talking to them a lot of broken English and you don’t want to judge off that, but then there is something that goes off. That’s like this feels like a red flag. Like there’s something a little off about this interaction.
Julie Krafchick:
I think they can’t really follow a convo so very similar over there too. It’s hard to keep a conversation going, unlike other people on the apps. And then of course, if they ever ask you for any money, that’s the sure fire sign that it’s a scam. I think if someone’s just calling you and this might not be a scam, this could just be someone in general, but if they’re calling you sweetheart or beautiful or obsessive names, especially for women or for men. What we’ve heard is they want to meet up real fast. They’re just really trying to get off the app ASAP because they’re trying to appeal to more. And they’re throwing in sexual innuendos and stuff.
Beau Friedlander:
But hold on now, but hold on now, Julie, because there are a lot of people who use these apps, men especially to hook up, not exclusively men. Totally Adam. And so they’re getting explicit and want to get off the app first fast because they’re only-
Julie Krafchick:
Yeah.
Beau Friedlander:
They just want to hook up and they just want to get it over with. They’re not interested in a big, fast relation… they are interested in a big, fast relationship. They’re not interested in a long slow one.
Julie Krafchick:
Totally. And it’s not always, that’s what makes scams difficult is because some of the behavior is what just other people are doing that aren’t trying to scam you. It’s maybe when all this stuff is combined and what we heard from all the people we talked to is they knew something felt off in their gut. There was that and they chose to ignore it. So maybe that’s the biggest sign of them all that you know deep down that this doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t seem like the way things typically go and not in a good way. And you might try to justify it to yourself that things haven’t been going my way, we were talking about earlier, it’s unfortunate that the norm is bad dating behavior. So when good dating behavior comes in, everyone’s like this feels too good to be true. But that’s the stuff that you have to balance of isn’t really too good to be true.
Adam Levin:
Okay. We know there’s a difference between scammers and then creepy guys.
Julie Krafchick:
Yeah.
Yue Xu:
But the same, they’re also-
Adam Levin:
But you’re, from your experience, when do the real, real daters who are trying to be honest about it. Not just let’s hook up tomorrow morning, but real daters actually want to… what’s the right timeframe to when they want to move off the app that you shouldn’t completely freak out that someone’s trying to move off the app?
Yue Xu:
And yeah, I don’t think… I think dating is such an individual experience. There’s no rule about how fast you should get off the apps. But I think ultimately the red flag is the language they use because one coin that we termed on Dateable is called a relationship with chicken, which is in modern dating. Everyone’s trying to show the least amount of in thinking that’s going to increase the number of matches that they get. And with these scammers, the language they use is that they immediately go into couple mode, immediately calling you babe or immediately saying, good morning, honey. And people love that because it’s like, oh, this person’s not scared to get into that relationship. I think it’s not so much the timeline of when they’re getting off the apps, it’s the language they use to get you off the apps.
Julie Krafchick:
Yeah. And how comfortable you feel too. Do you feel like you have a sense of this person that you want to give them your phone number? We always recommend people giving Google voice numbers, just in case because of this, but usually there needs to be some connection that’s formed beyond just what you would read on a profile.
Adam Levin:
What are the worst dating scams aside from the stuff that we see on Tinder Swindler and stuff like that. But based on the… your listeners, what are some of the worst stories they’ve told you about these dating scams?
Julie Krafchick:
I mean, the one that sticks out to me, I mean, there… we had a bunch, but there’s probably Yue will have a different one, but the one that stands out to me was actually someone that got to meet the person. It wasn’t a total stranger and it just moved real fast. Probably by week one, they were moving… they were moved in together. And what was hard about this one I think from listening to it was not only did he, I don’t know, clock in like a $1000 between different expenses. It was paying for his dog to get neutered. And there was actually even a night out that he took… treated her to, but then once they broke up, she had him Venmo back that money. It was a combined, it was a lot of different needs that came up.
Julie Krafchick:
He asked to be on her cell phone bill. I think at that point she was like, this feels like a lot. We’ve known each other for a week. And I think what’s scary to me on this one is it’s all the things we want in a relationship. We want someone that wants to be serious and to commit to us and take those next steps. And she was saying her therapist said, if all the stuff that he did was over the course of six months to a year, it would’ve been a great relationship. She was talking about how they were dancing in the kitchen and going on these really nice dinners and all this stuff. And what is problematic about it though, is also rushed. And there was a financial output at the end. And then ultimately when she felt like she was catching onto it didn’t want to keep supporting him that’s when he got upset.
Julie Krafchick:
And luckily she said that she had friends that she called and the cops came to make sure he was off the property and all that. And it was just like this, I was just thinking when she was talking about it, I can’t imagine all this going down in one week. And while I think it’s not ideal, the stories we hear of people sending random people money over the internet that may or may not be even the people that they’re pretending to be. What’s scary about this one it’s like this person, I know who they are, they know where I live. And I think that would freak me out to have that person out there running around.
Travis Taylor:
I think one thing that this, a lot of this comes back to especially with these scams comes into authentication. And I’m just wondering what you both think about is there some… should these dating apps require more authentication or is that just going to lead it into a deeper web of account padding that Beau referred to.
Yue Xu:
The more barrier to entry the better, because even the scammers, we need to do that extra effort to even be on the apps. Authentication is I feel it’s a no brainer.
Adam Levin:
But now it is a question to everybody is how, what would be the most effective and safest way to actually really authenticate people.
Beau Friedlander:
That’s my question.
Adam Levin:
From the app perspective is how they do it. And what would someone need to feel like the person they were communicating with was actually authentic.
Beau Friedlander:
You’d have to do a thumbprint, a butt print, weight, height, retina scan and high school transcript.
Yue Xu:
No, I think that it’s simple having other people in the app to authenticate you, having two other people who are already on the app to authenticate you plus identification.
Beau Friedlander:
Well, that’s how Rio works, which is a influ… dating app for influential.
Julie Krafchick:
Yeah. I mean, my only concern would be if the scammer got on and they start recommending people and that it becomes a cycle of scammers. But there would have to be something that prevented that cycle from even taking off in the first place.
Adam Levin:
Dating apps, are they worth the risk? Yes or no.
Julie Krafchick:
I absolutely believe they are. And again, I’ve met my partner on dating apps. I’ve met multiple partners on dating apps. I think you just need to be smart about using them. And like we said, when something feels too good to be true, second guess it, and then look out for some of these signs. You can also even do reverse image searches and there’s other ways to see if this person is valid. And yeah, I think there’s always going to be a risk with anything. I’ve heard of scams, romance scams that didn’t involve data gaps that were people that met on… in person in the dog park. You never know, if someone’s out there trying to target you for some reason, it can happen anywhere though. So yes, it might be more prevalent on dating apps, but I really don’t want people to feel discouraged to use dating apps because of this. We just need to be smarter about how we use them and not having tunnel vision and believing the fairy tale all the time. Being realistic.
Beau Friedlander:
Thank you so much.
Adam Levin:
Yeah. We really appreciate you coming on today. And how can people find out more about how to find you and find Dateable?
Julie Krafchick:
Yeah, I mean, they can go to dateablepodcast.com at dateable podcast on Instagram, or any podcasts platform, Dateable podcasts you can just search for us there.
Adam Levin:
Well, Yue Xu and Julie Krafchick, thank you so much for joining us today and see you on the dating apps.
Yue Xu:
Thanks so much for having us.
Julie Krafchick:
Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Adam Levin:
Thanks a lot.
Beau Friedlander:
Okay. Adam.
Adam Levin:
Beau.
Beau Friedlander:
Adam.
Adam Levin:
Beau.
Beau Friedlander:
Adam.
Adam Levin:
Beau.
Beau Friedlander:
I got to say it was interesting and we probably should just go through what our own, I guess top three warnings are for people who are using dating apps. You go first.
Adam Levin:
Okay. Well, listening to Yue and Julie brings to mind what’s going on with the whole Elon Musk Twitter purchase.
Beau Friedlander:
How?
Adam Levin:
Well now it’s on hold because he said, I need to get a grip on exactly how many bot accounts are out there and fake accounts. And this is the same thing with dating apps is the question is, and this came up with Ashley Madison, which was a dating app of a different kind. But the whole issue is how many people on this app are real as opposed to how many are contrived, how many are burner accounts? And let’s think about it. This is where the value for any dating app is in the volume of people that you have an opportunity in meetings. Therefore the larger volume, the larger the available universe of people. The more that it might sound it’s an appealing thing because you’ll have access to so many different people. There’s only one problem, there are a lot of the accounts that are fake burner accounts.
Beau Friedlander:
Burner accounts, Travis, you get to go next, you get number two. Number two, the second most important thing.
Travis Taylor:
Hasa.
Beau Friedlander:
Hasa.
Adam Levin:
Hasa.
Travis Taylor:
I’d say one of the most, one of the key pieces of advice is something that we have said repeatedly about social media, which is don’t overshare. You can keep things vague. You can let people know a little bit more about you without actually needing to give them that many fine details. If you, the more details you give online on any app dating or otherwise, the more ammo you’re giving a potential scammer or identity thief.
Beau Friedlander:
Okay. I’m going to, mine is totally different. Mine is this, do not go on dating apps, ever seriously. Don’t do it seriously. I’m serious. Go to the… if you eat a keto diet, go to the bacon section of the grocery store, you’re going to find someone better. Or if you are on a bicycling kick, go on a bike ride, meet somebody. Me personally, I’m sorry. I think the dating apps are a horrible idea and I’ve been wrong almost consistently for the past few episodes. So just disregard what I’m saying, but if you want to be a curmudgeon and you want to live in the woods and you want to hang out with bears and raccoons, don’t go on dating apps.
Adam Levin:
You know Beau you’re so 1995 here.
Beau Friedlander:
Oh I resemble that comment.
Adam Levin:
Now listen, dating apps are here to stay, especially in the age of COVID and whatever horrendous future pandemics that we may face as a world. So the question is within that which exists this universe as opposed to the universe of our yearning youth.
Beau Friedlander:
Okay. Okay. Then I would say, go slow.
Adam Levin:
What advice. Would you-
Beau Friedlander:
Go slow. I would say go slow. And if somebody wants to go faster, go even slower.
Adam Levin:
I mean dating apps are here to stay for another reason too. I mean, according to the FTC relationship scams grew six times more popular between 2017 to 2021.
Beau Friedlander:
More popular or more rife.
Adam Levin:
Well rife and I guess, popular.
Beau Friedlander:
Common.
Adam Levin:
If you’re a scammer, they’re certainly popular.
Beau Friedlander:
Yeah, I was going to say, because I can’t, I mean their popularity would be a suspect unless the FBI really loves this kind of criminal.
Adam Levin:
And it costs people over, now I’m going to do New York lottery voice. $1.3 billion.
Beau Friedlander:
Ooh. Sound of feet clattering, man. I don’t know that. I just think real life I liked what Yue had to say about authentication though. It would be interesting and smart to have an account where you had at least two people on the app vouch for you and say, yep, this person’s for real. The only problem with that is it’s not that hard to create so many burner accounts that you can have burner accounts vouching for each other.
Adam Levin:
I mean, in the world of deep fake.
Beau Friedlander:
Yeah.
Adam Levin:
You can. I mean, just it’s like brushing, but for people.
Beau Friedlander:
Well, but also Travis, I mean Adam brought up deep, deep fakes, but with these burner accounts, we’re talking about super shallow, penny deep fakes.
Travis Taylor:
Yeah. You can just go into this person does not exist.com and just hit refresh until you get a good profile pick. I think one of the other dangers too though, is that if you have say you’re the one dating app that has authenticated users, that gives people a false sense of security. That if they start seeing people on there, they may let their guard down. Because what they’re saying is, oh, I think this person’s more likely to not be a scammer.
Beau Friedlander:
Well, please add that then if you’re keeping score to my thought that burner accounts could be verifying each other.
Travis Taylor:
Right.
Adam Levin:
So listen, the moral of the story is maybe not don’t talk to strangers, but online in real life. However, your date is just safety first.
Travis Taylor:
Thanks everyone for listening. And if you like the episode, please give us five stars and leave us say a review on Apple podcasts ratings.
Adam Levin:
Ratings.
Beau Friedlander:
Adam, do you want to be happy?
Adam Levin:
For the rest of my life I want to be happy.
Beau Friedlander:
What the Heck with Adam Levin is a production of Loud Tree Media.
Adam Levin:
It’s produced by Andrew Steven, the man with two first names.
Travis Taylor:
You can find us online at loudtreemedia.com and on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at Adam K Levin.
