Can You Trust People on Dating Websites? Signs that Show Scammers

You might be hoping that the beautiful Ukranian neuro-surgeon with big breats that you met on your favorite dating site could be the one. Unfortunately, we hate to break it to you. She's probably not a real person. 

Recent news shows that scam dating profiles are more likely to say they are Catholic; from Nigeria, the Ukraine or the Philippines; widowed and have a doctoral degree-among other characteristics, according to new data compiled by the dating website SeekingArrangement.com.

It might seem sad, but these heartbreakers are more likely interested in what's in your wallet instead of your soul.

SeekingArangement caters to a certain type of relationship, where lessons apply to other dating sites and even to other aspects of digital life, according to spokesman for the website, Leroy Velasquez.

"Because of the fact that we do cater to wealthy demographic, we do get an influx of scammers," he said, according to PopSci. But scammers act the same everywhere. "Your random spam email? It's a really crappy version of what a man or woman would get on a dating profile."

PopSci shows that the website's statistics have screened new profiles over 10 months. The profiles first go through an automated screening software, which flags both traits in the profile, including certain ethnicities and things that aren't necessarily visible in all profiles, such as certain IP addresses and even key words that scammers seem to like more than other people.

A person on staff then goes through flagged profiles to decide whom to ban, according to Velasquez, and there's a lot more banned than you might think.

SeekingArrangement has banned 60,000 profiles in the last 10 months, or about 220 a day.

But what exactly are the specific ingredients for the typical scam profile? Let's take a look.

--Religion: Who doesn't want a mate that loves some Jesus? Those looking for love online, that's who! According to statistics, scammers tend to be mostly Catholic (or say they are.) Eighty-two percent of banned SeekingArrangment profiles, in fact, said that they were Catholic or religion was an important factor in their life.

--Targeting women: According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the most common romance scam target is a woman over 40.

--Black widows:  Sixty-three percent of scam profiles say that they're widowers.

--Doctoral delusion: Thirty-seven percent of scam profiles say they have a graduate degree and 54 percent say they have doctors. Velasquez said that the website has never found a fraudulent profile in which the person said he or she had a high school diploma and no bachelor's degree.

--Certain races:  Although American Indians make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, 36 percent of scam profiles say they're native.

--Certain places:  Just like spam in your email inbox, scam profiles most commonly come from Nigeria (28 percent). Other common countries of origin are the Ukraine (23 percent) and the Philippines (21 percent).

--Shifty jobs: Twenty-six percent of scammers say they're engineers, 25 percent say they're royalty and 23 percent say they're self-employed. 

Yikes, who can you trust!