Thanks to numerous sites with solid reputations and a track record of uniting happy couples, online dating sites are a mainstream, respected industry. Unfortunately, as with anything that garners a following and public attention, scammers have flooded dating platforms and social media sites with attempts at stealing your money or worse, your entire identity.

In a recent case, a 35-year-old businessman was cheated of Rs 60 lakh by a woman whom he had befriended on a dating website in July 2017. The woman sought financial help for the treatment of her father who she claimed was admitted in the BM Birla Heart Research Centre. After transferring Rs 30,000 to her account initially, he made two subsequent transfers of Rs 19 lakh and Rs 40.7 lakh to two other accounts. However, once the transactions were completed, the accused stopped answering all calls.

While that example may be a more extreme case of being scammed, the alarming number of such cases reported lately reflects the enormity of the problem. But those looking for love don’t need to avoid online dating altogether to avoid getting scammed, as long as they keep some cyber safety tips in mind, such as the following ones.

1. How did you meet? – If you sign up for a profile on a well-known dating site, there are some tools you can use to “vet” anyone you meet. At the very least, many of the more popular sites offer you the ability to report someone for shady behavior, and these sites can block people who’ve broken the rules in the past.
   However, a number of romance scam victims have met their scammers via social media. If you receive a message or friend request from a stranger, be especially cautious about answering. Google the person’s name and photo, too, to see what kind of results pop up. You might be surprised to find out that the name and photo belongs to someone else.
2. Be mindful of oversharing – Spending time chatting with a new friend online is exciting, but be very careful of the questions the other person is asking. Are these questions meant to get to know you better, or to dig around until they can piece together your identity? Questions like, “Where are you from?” are completely normal, but if they want the specific hometown or what street you lived on, that could be a red flag that they’re seeking the answers to your security questions.
3. Take it slow – Be extremely careful of online friendships that escalate at an unusually fast pace with talk of love or future plans. There’s no reason to run screaming for the hills, but it should make you stop and think. Any mention of exclusivity, canceling your online dating profile, planning in-person visits, and even long-term commitment before you’ve really gotten to know each other should give you pause. In the case of a scammer, spending months developing a relationship is a waste of their time.
4. Then there’s the money talk – One surefire way to know if your new online friend is a scammer is when money pops up. It might be subtle at first, just a few voiced concerns to test the waters. Eventually, a “crisis” happens and they are at their wit’s end, embarrassed to even be asking you to help out.

That’s when you know it’s a scam. There’s no reason why someone you’ve been chatting with online for only a few weeks needs to ask you for money. Remember, if this was a face-to-face relationship, you’d most likely never loan someone a large amount of money after knowing them for such a short time; you’d also never loan them money twice or even three times without repayment, yet that’s what scammers often ask. They string their victims along until the well runs dry: when you either can’t or won’t turn over any more cash, they disappear.

The worst part of scams like these is the emotional toll they take on the victim. Not only is there the knowledge that you were stolen from, but those feelings are combined with the very real pain of also losing what you thought was a promising relationship. Be cautious about dating both online and offline, and safeguard your emotional health while watching out for your wallet as well.

You may also want to consider purchasing identity protection with proactive identity monitoring, to be alerted of suspicious activity or if your personal information has been listed for sale or bought on the black market.