The Friday Column - How To Spot A Love Fraudster

Last week I received this message in my Facebook inbox

A flattering introductory message from a rather handsome Barry Morgan. In fact his profile pic suggests to me he is probably a model with looks like that.

Now had I been single (I am a happily married mother of one) I may have been interested in replying to this and possibly becoming friends with him. Or perhaps if I were divorced, looking for love or just feeling low and vulnerable I would also be tempted to befriend this rather nice looking chap that had taken an interest in me.

I was about to delete the message but then something made me stop and decide to look into it further. I took a look at his profile, he had 4 pictures, all model like. He had friends, all ladies of various ages. The only information about him was that he was male and single. His wall statuses were all about love.

I told my husband that evening and he showed me a really easy way to check who is using the image (what other sites it may have appeared on, this is also useful for us if we suspect our blog images are being used elsewhere..)

Step One 

Click on the person's profile, bring up their profile picture up large, right click and copy image URL

Update: 

I use Google Chrome - If you use Internet Explorer, this step is a little different.

See the bottom of this article for an example.

Step Two 


Go to the Google search page, click on images and click on the camera, now press paste to put the URL of the image into the search engine.

Step Three 


This will bring up the results

Within seconds I could see that this photo is being used by a number of profiles on FB all with different names and some sites linking it to a scam.

A lucky escape

Now I didn't pursue this friendship request, so I don't know what 'Barry Morgan's' real intention was..

I sometimes read about ladies who have been caught out by relationship scams, I really hope by posting this I will be helping someone out and preventing them from becoming a victim.



Note for Internet Explorer Users
I generally use Google Chrome as my web-browser and step one is a little different for users of Internet Explorer. Try this instead:

Right-click the image and choose Properties

Highlight the "Address (URL)" line, right-click it and choose COPY.