Yesterday I had one the worst experiences yet from the wonderful world of dating apps!
I got talking with a rather average guy, swapped a few casual photos and then he asked for my Instagram tag to follow me… thought nothing of it so sent. He then said he couldn’t login to his account to follow so asked if wanted to chat on Snapchat instead, so we connected on there and talked a little more, then it all flipped on its head…
He totally turned on me and had taken screenshots of all my private photos, then gathered details of all my insta followers and tracked down my business page too and got details of my work colleagues who follow me and started to threaten me with sending my images to everyone if I didn’t answer the phone
He then repeatedly started to harass me by phoning continuously via Snapchat but i refused to answer it. He messaged me on the dating app to say if I dare blocked or ignored him he’d spread my photos everywhere for all to see… and again nack on Snapchat he attempted to hold me at ransom saying if I didn’t pay him in 20 mins he’d start to leak my images to all my work colleagues then family and friends
This truly was horrendous and if it wasn’t for the blessing of having a friend well versed in Legal matters I think I’d have crumbled as I was adamant in not giving into the threats.
My friend was able to track them down on the dating app where this guy proceeded to try the same scam on them unsuccessfully but allowed my friend to find out this guy was in fact an aggressive AI bot designed to lure and entrap people!!!
My friend advised me to not reply or open anymore messages from them and change all my passwords and privacy settings on instagram, to which like magic this AI blackmailer backed down and blocked me on the dating app so I couldn’t report them but I was lucky enough to get them on Snapchat reported and for once a social platform done good in responding to my aid.
This experience has truly left me shaken up as I see myself very savvy in knowing a scam but this guy literally was on a whole level of something from terminator intelligence… I’m now left questioning everything and trusting no one who talks to me
I’m also still slightly panicked in thinking what if they’ve sent my images out to everyone but is just waiting in peoples spam to be discovered…
Glad you got it sorted. You have to be so careful nowadays as scammers are everywhere. Once had a random email saying they had access to the camera on my laptop and had compromising photos of me, and if i didn’t send £1,000 via a link they’d send them to all my contacts. I knew there were no pics so told them to F*** off. Unsurprisingly i heard nothing from them again!
Man that sucks and glad you got it under control. What a horrible feeling as I know from experience as well. I thankfully have a cousin that works for a high tech company and is in their cyber security group. He helped me out big time and didn’t judge me for the mess I’d gotten into.
Terrible experience so glad you got it sorted, you see so many nowadays, all the ones which say they have compromising pictures of you jerking off to niche porn and will send it to all of your contacts if you don’t send money. Those I easily deal with as I don’t have a camera on my computer, so they can all go and f*ck themselves.
It does destroy trust.
Blimey @AJSTAR that must have been a terrible time for you to go through … but very pleased you got through it without anything seriously bad happening permanently due to knowing the right person to talk to … and you are to be applauded for letting us know… stay safe love x
Not a nice incident @AJSTAR you really cannot trust anyone on the internet. I think the moral of the story is not to send any pictures to anyone until you know and trust them. Dating apps must be a nightmare to use, thank god i’m happily married.
Oh, @AJSTAR that’s horrific and I can see how it would produce future trust problems with (hopefully) legitimate people on the dating sites. I’m so sorry it happened to you.
I’ve had the emails @WillC and @DLJL mentioned and plenty of phone calls from scammers from “banks” and “HMRC”, thankfully never anything where they actually had anything to blackmail with. In those circumstances, and if I’m not too busy I quite enjoy playing with them. I used to get the, “You’ve been involved in an accident in the last 10 years” one all the time and they just continued calling despite being told, “Yes, I have, and I recieved my compensation” followed by, “No, I haven’t” and ringing off. They still kept calling… eventually, I followed @WillC 's advice and fully played along with it, telling them that indeed it was a terrible accident that wasn’t my fault, so bad that I’d died. I was passed to a supervisor who eventually hung up on me! They never called again
I’m glad you managed to report your would be blackmailer to Snapchat. Is there no way you can just message the dating app admin to advise them of your experience? I’m sure they don’t want bots like that on their site.
It truly was one them hot sweats panic moments cause they was sending me all these screenshots of people I know who they was threatening to contact if i didn’t pay them and answer the phone but I knew if I had answered then they’d probably gained more info of what my phone number was and stuff so am so lucky they backed down after I ignored them.
Yes! I put masking tape on my laptop cameras so if they’d tried that porkie I’d have dealt with them easy. It was the fact they had taken screenshots and accessed some of my private photos which they sent evidence of to me what had me at a knifes edge… I’m still kinda shook up thinking what if they did actually send stuff to people I know and it’s in their spam waiting to be discovered
Thank you I felt it was the right thing to open up about it at least on here so if anyone else gets caught in a similar situation or are on dating apps, to just be aware of this new toxic scam going about.
One my other friends today said that the experience was a proper criminal matter which could have resulted in prison charges for whoever it was doing it… yet I doubt the police would have managed to do much in ways of tracking them down when it literally could been anyone anywhere… I’d expect if it was revenge porn type situation from a known person then actions could be taken.
Definitely since the advances of ai it’s literally turning dating apps into a piranha tank and the worst part is you don’t even have to share photos for them to be able to blackmail you as they just need a face photo to make you into a porn clip to share about.
The irony was after all that happened, I go on YouTube and it randomly has on my browsing feed the stories about a string of teen high school boys who was in the news a while back having committed suicide from porn blackmail and their parents talking about how a situation like that is so hard to help onto fast as literally in a matter of minutes to an hour it can wreck havoc on a persons life and push them to doing irreversible things
lol I used to love playing along with them sort of junk spammers too especially the ones about the solicitors who had a rich client wanting to donate all their wealth to me or the Russian brides seeking a hot horny British husband
This blackmail one though was on a totally other level I’ve not experienced before and the realism of them in writing was scary when my Legal friend said it was actually a developed ai bot being controlled by someone else!!!
I would probably contact the admin of the app but I don’t think they’d really care as the app is full of trash that I’m constantly reporting to them and nothing gets done plus they themselves have made the app into a scam of sorts to squeeze money out of people who use it and flood them with spam ads… if there was literally any other dating app what has activity on it better then I’d be off to that rather than this one but alas it’s still the only one going
I’m still getting panicked thinking what if they try again or did actually send some stuff to my work colleagues and it’s just a matter of time for them to find it in their spam files
I’m also worried that even though I have now blocked and reported them, they still have those screen grabs of my images that they can do anything with or even use me as a face to scam others…
Those spammers, balckmailers do not care about the consequences of their action.
They need to hit perhaps 100 to 1000 victims to get one to pay. (Finger in the air figure, no idea). What is sure is that countless victims are left in fear.
I much prefered dating pre internet, and find myself very lucky i never had to deal with any of that.
I’m so sorry this happened to you and so glad you got things sorted. There are some great people online but there are some rotten eggs too.
I personally won’t send photos firet and I reverse search images, juat to check they haven’t been ripped from porn. There is a lot of fun to be had but it does pay to pay attention to the temperament of people. ,
Make sure you think with the head on your shoulders first in future and don’t rush in so fast. Have fun
Dont worry too much.
All they’re interested is getting money transfered over to them.
They will try a thousand time or more, and dedicate their energy to finding more victims rather than enacting their threats.
It’s a simple matter of time is worth money.
You don’t pay you’re useless to them.
They have better time moving on to the next target.
In the unlikely case they do target you, one shouldn’t be embarrassed. You’ve been taken advantage of.
And consider it a lesson learnt. Never share pics like that again. Here it’s a scammer, the next time it could be a angry ex lover actually trying to hurt you.
If you do want to share, use the lovehoney policy. No identifiable bits (no faces, plain backgrounds, hide tattoos/piercings… and of course, hide your nipples!!!)
I felt it was the right thing to open up about it at least on here so if anyone else gets caught in a similar situation or are on dating apps, to just be aware of this new toxic scam going about.
since the advances of ai it’s literally turning dating apps into a piranha tank and the worst part is you don’t even have to share photos for them to be able to blackmail you as they just need a face photo to make you into a porn clip to share about.
plus they themselves have made the app into a scam of sorts to squeeze money out of people who use it and flood them with spam ads… if there was literally any other dating app what has activity on it better then I’d be off to that rather than this one but alas it’s still the only one going