OSINT: Romance Scams

Explore social engineering as psychological manipulation in information security, revealing slow, trust-building scams and rapid mega hijacking driven by authority, scarcity, fear, and greed.

Explore sock puppet accounts and burner profiles with fake names, locations, jobs, and photos. Learn how they appear believable in romance scams and how to spot them.

Learn how to guard against online dating risks, avoid sharing compromising photos, and recognize sextortion and other scams, including risky security questions used to reset passwords.

Spot red flags and signs of deception as indicators to stay alert, such as language changes, financial requests, mismatched emails, blurry photos, and aggressive questioning.

Explore how catfishing uses fake online personas on dating sites to obtain money or sensitive information, leading to sextortion or compromised accounts.

Learn how to report and block harassing or fake profiles across dating apps and social media, with app-specific steps for Tinder, Facebook, and Snapchat.

Explore how financial scams work on dating apps, including pickers and middlemen, payment methods like gift cards and steam cards, and red flags such as mismatched names and urgent screenshots.

Identify common email phishing tactics linked to dating sites, verify sender domains, hover over links to inspect destinations, and use whois, reverse image searches, and virus scans to protect devices.

Understand how scammers use the slang term alaye to gauge victims and flag potential scammers, and discover quick tests to identify suspicious conversations—though not foolproof.

Scan files and URLs with hybrid analysis and VirusTotal using sandboxed machines to detect suspicious content, and always scan PDFs, Word, Excel, or photos before opening to check for viruses.

Analyze general dating site profiles by examining names, blurbs, photos, and interactions, then verify identity with cross-platform searches, reverse image checks, and deepfake detection for red flags.

Learn how verified profiles on dating apps aim to prove real identities through video selfies and pose prompts, while acknowledging spoofing risks and costs.

Explore how fake Snapchat snaps are spoofed with Ovf editor, and how scammers exploit verification by sending gallery images, while using screenshots and reverse image search to spot romance scams.

Learn to identify AI generated profile photos in romance scams using deep fake and GAN detectors, including a Chrome extension that checks fake profile pictures on dating apps.

Use reverse image searches to verify profile photos and locate their online presence, comparing results from Google, Bing, Yandex, Image Rater, and TinEye.

Learn how to analyze online images for romance scam risk by observing desk items, notes, calendars, and devices, and by performing reverse image searches to verify identities.

This lecture shows how OSINT investigators verify identity in romance scams by comparing photos. It covers tattoos, scars, facial features, eye position, and AI face comparison tools, with cautions.

Explore AI-generated videos through text-to-video and image-to-video to understand how convincing profiles can fuel romance scams and platform safeguards.

Identify AI-generated video and voice in LinkedIn interviews, verify identities by phone, and watch for inconsistent movements and background filters to prevent romance and financial scams.

Geotag teaches how photo metadata embeds coordinates in images, enabling geolocation verification to check a location claim, while highlighting privacy tips like turning geolocation off.

Explore geolocation in social media, including metadata and platform settings, and learn to verify a user’s location to expose romance scams.

Explore how to use Google Maps and Bing Maps to verify a meeting location, view street and satellite imagery, and assess surrounding areas for safety against romance scams.

Explore how social media serves as a base for open source intelligence, showing how to verify identities across platforms, analyze followers and posts, and compare dating profiles for consistency.

Use LinkedIn to verify information about a person by researching job experience, education, skills, and activity, then compare profile details with what their network reveals.

Compare landline, cell phone, and VoIP numbers. VoIP numbers are disposable and lack reverse searchability, a concern for romance scams on dating sites.

Learn to identify landline, cell, and VoIP numbers using Num Lookup and Experian tools, recognize VoIP indicators, and assess risk in romance scam investigations.

Explore reverse phone searches with Spy Dialer to uncover information about numbers, using name and photo lookup, voicemail checks, spam reporting, and phone details for scam awareness.