How do I spot a fake profile?

Fake profiles fall into two groups: people pretending to be someone else, and accounts run to extract money. The signals overlap, and both are caught by the same small number of checks.

The photos

Reverse image search every profile before you invest anything. Right-click, search by image, or use your phone's built-in lens. If the same face turns up under three names or on a stock photo site, you are done.

Look at the set as a whole. Real people have inconsistent photos: different years, different lighting, bad ones. A profile where every image looks professionally lit, or where all of them are clearly from one session, is worth a second look.

Very few photos, all cropped, no full face, is a weaker signal than people think — plenty of people have good reasons for that. Weigh it with everything else rather than on its own.

The writing

Generic bios that could describe anyone. Odd formality, or phrasing that shifts register between messages. Answers that do not quite address what you asked.

The strongest textual signal is speed of escalation. Intense affection within a day or two from someone who has learned nothing about you is the standard opening of a romance scam, and it works precisely because it is flattering.

The requests

Any request for money, ever, for any reason: a stuck payment, a visa, an emergency, a customs fee. There is no version of this that is real.

Also treat as a hard stop: invitations to invest in anything, requests to move to a specific outside platform straight away, and requests for intimate photos early. That last one is often the setup for extortion rather than the goal itself.

The check that settles it

Ask for a short video call. Not a long one — two minutes is plenty. Fake accounts almost never survive this, and the excuses tend to be elaborate: a broken camera, a bad connection, shyness that somehow never resolves.

One refusal is not proof. A pattern of refusals plus any of the above is as close to proof as you will get.

Report as well as block

Blocking protects you. Reporting is what gets the account looked at, and it takes ten seconds. Report first, then block, because on some apps blocking removes your access to the conversation you would need to reference.

If money changed hands, report it to your bank and to the fraud reporting service in your country. That is not embarrassing; it is the thing that occasionally gets it back.