Fake accounts/trolls

I dunno why but I've been getting a'lot of trolls and bots contacting me on this site and it's starting to become an issue.  Is anyone else having a problem with this?  There's gotta be a way of vetting people no this site to prevent these issues, because right now it's getting seriously annoying.  

I've gotten messages from two or three bots or trolls or otherwise fraudulent accounts.  Usually, they're pretty easy to spot because they behave the opposite of real members. With the real accounts, I take the time to compose a friendly and thoughtful message to them, they visit my profile, and don't bother responding. Not "thanks, but no thanks,", not "you're not exactly whom I'm looking for, but good luck," not anything at all. It's like introducing yourself to someone in real life who looks you up and down, then turns and walks away without a word. :-/

Bots, on the other hand, initiate contact. "Hey, I liked your profile, I wanna get together, email me at this address." Not only is that unusual, it's highly suspect when they're writing from 1,000 miles away. ;-)  Still, I must confess even fake interest feels good for a second or two. It hasn't happened enough to really annoy me yet.

I have also found the site is pretty good at identifying them.  If you click on the suspect member's screen name, there is often a warning in their profile from Mark: "suspected bot, please ignore."  I'm not a tech guy, so I don't know how to weed them out entirely. But I suspect there are a lot fewer fake accounts here than on, say, Craigslist. If we meet one or two people here who become good cuddle buddies, it will probably have been worth wading through the bots. And if, after a reasonable time, we don't meet anyone, well, there's probably no point in sticking around, bots or no bots. My $.02.

alexb2

its usually obvious, the bots will ask you to email an address outside the site, so they can send you spam. If you think about it, you don't need to use an external email address.

Mark

There is no person more frustrated by these scammer/troll accounts than me. It's a constant battle but I do think the situation is slowly improving. To give you an idea of the difficulties involved, take a read of this article about Craigslist.

So far we have responded to all reports within 24 hours so I would really encourage people to do that.  If you prefer, you can also update this thread with accounts that you suspect but it might take longer to be noticed.

As mentioned, sometimes instead of deleting the account we just put a warning and then try and learn a few things from the account's activity. 

In regards to spotting them: 

1) These scammers tend to have broken English and try and get you to communicate over email or phone early on. This is the biggest red flag so please watch out.

2) Do a reverse image search on their profile image (right click image in Chrome > Search Google for this image) as it often reveals them to be a semi-famous model or porn star. However, this doesn't always work as scammers sometimes use photos randomly taken from social networking websites.

3) Copy and paste some of their profile text into Google because you may find it being used on another website by someone else who appears equally suspicious. Or by what appears to be someone with the same photo but completely different profile facts (e.g. location).

cuddlyme

Thanks Mark! I never knew how to do a reverse search! smh haha