{"id":18447,"date":"2022-03-08T03:10:06","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T11:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/08\/news-12180\/"},"modified":"2022-03-08T03:10:06","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T11:10:06","slug":"news-12180","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/08\/news-12180\/","title":{"rendered":"When fake dating profiles try the military approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Christopher Boyd| Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2022 10:33:11 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve run into many romance scams over the years. You\u2019ll find them lurking on social media, instant messaging, chatrooms\/forums, and many more besides. They\u2019re particularly popular during times of war or natural disaster, as they often dovetail into donation and charity scams.<\/p>\n

The icing on the cake for many of these fakeouts is an air of respectability. Anything that adds legitimacy or something seemingly trustworthy is going to pull in potential victims. Of all the romance scams I\u2019ve dealt with, the most common element is probably the military-centric profile picture.<\/p>\n

A profile you can trust<\/h2>\n

Nothing adds a splash of appeal in the minds of scammers quite like a dashing hero in full combat get-up. That\u2019s their game plan, anyway. It does seem to be rather successful though, with a neverending stream of people losing lots of money. Worth noting, large volumes of cash can go AWOL<\/a> even without the addition of anything military related.<\/p>\n

Security researchers dealing with military themed romance scams will often recognise the same images in circulation time and time again. Scammers often lazily lift the first army general they can find on Wikipedia. Other times, they\u2019ll put a bit of work into it. It\u2019s harder to pinpoint a scam if the image being used isn\u2019t particularly well known.<\/p>\n

As a result, scammers will trawl social media pages, work portals, and even Linkedin profiles. One stolen profile picture later and they\u2019re in business. One peculiar side effect of this is that the supposedly unknown image starts getting more use as additional scammers simply grab it from their peers. The end result is that no stolen soldier photograph remains unknown for long.<\/p>\n

When dating scammers make you famous<\/h2>\n

Have you ever considered what it\u2019s like for the army person themselves when they realise they\u2019re the face of scams?<\/p>\n

This is the problem faced by Col. Daniel Blackmon<\/a>. His images have been used in romance scams since around 2014, and is basically playing whack-a-mole trying to get these fake accounts shut down. The scammers grabbed his photographs from his (at the time) entirely open Facebook page, and things spiralled out of control from there. The scam messages tied to the fake profiles aren\u2019t particularly unique, and sound like all the other romance scams out there. With a military twist, of course. Some of the examples from the article:<\/p>\n