Nowadays, people don’t realize the importance of online safety. We venture into online dating blindfolded without learning about what the necessary steps are to protect ourselves and our information. Every online dater should go through the necessary steps of researching, reading the horror stories online, spotting scammer patterns and so on because safety should also be on the list of your top priorities. Love is out there but you have to be careful when finding it, especially online. In any case, if you realized that you’ve just been scammed, do not panic. Here are 4 essential tips that you could do:
1. If you’ve given out your bank information…
You have to, at that very moment, contact the customer hotline of your bank. Let them know about the situation. They will recommend a variety of actions that you can take. They may suggest to close your account, change your PINs or change any password that you have. They will update your information and make everything safe and intact again.
2. If you’ve just been scammed on your Credit Card…
You have to, again, call your bank or call the company that issues the card right away. Have block the card and then monitor the latest activities on it. You have to determine which credit activities are yours and which ones are the scammers.
IMPORTANT: Only call your bank or credit card company using the number provided at the back of your card or on your current statement.
3. If you’ve just been scammed with Identity Theft…
This could be the hardest one of all since it’s your name that’s on the line. Keep a journal of the activities that your name is involved in. Contact your credit card company or bank to freeze accounts and block any type of transaction starting now. Next thing is to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commision (FTC). After which, a police report and then the last thing is to file an online complaint form with the National Consumers League at Fraud.org.
4. If you’ve just been scammed out of your Money…
This is a situation where you wired a certain amount of money to someone you met on the internet. Please realize that you may never get that money back. The important thing now is to protect yourself and prevent any future recurrence. Report the scammer to the proper authorities like the online dating website that you’ve signed up to and then file a police report. You can then file another complaint or report to appropriate online entities like the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
Always Remember to…
These 4 tips or steps are going to helpful when you get scammed online. Take note of them and do a bit of research of your own. Just remember that you need to do the following to prevent the same thing from happening:
- Limit the information that you put on your social media or dating profile.
- Learn from your mistakes.
- Cut all lines of communication between yourself and the scammer. Chances are, the scammer is going to contact you again in the hopes of getting more money.
- It’s important for the dating website that you’ve signed up to to have a good anti-scam policy.
- Always be on guard.