Meta Boosts Warnings About Romance Scams Ahead of Valentine’s Day

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, Meta has shared some new reminders about romance scams, along with safety tips to help users of its apps avoid falling victim to scammers in the most romantic time of the year.

(Well, the most romantic time in theory, I realize that not everyone cares about Valentine’s Day).

As explained by Meta:

“Romance scams are a common scheme in which scammers target people in a variety of ways – malicious texts or emails, dating apps, social media posts, discussion forums and more – under romantic pretenses. In these cases, scammers would typically pose as attractive, single and successful individuals, often with a military or business background. They would send cold messages to many targets at once – in a typical spray and pray scheme – to initiate contact. If a target were to respond, the scammer would try to build trust over a period of time, ultimately asking for money or suggesting a fraudulent investment opportunity.”

And such cases are rising. According to the FTC, Americans lost $1.14 billion to romance scammers in 2023 alone.

So it’s definitely worth taking note, and ensuring that anyone who may be reaching out is legit.

In order to avoid such scams, Meta has provided some quick tips:

In addition, Meta’s also working with third party groups, including Graphika, to disrupt scams that take advantage of people looking for relationships, which has seen it take action against a range of romance scam groups, including U.S. military impersonators from Nigeria, as well as Kenya-linked scammers posing as fake dating agencies.

Meta’s also expanding its in-app warnings when it detects suspicious activity, like these pop-ups on Messenger.

It’s also testing new in-stream prompts that warn about romance scams specifically:

Given the rising prevalence of romance scams, this is an important focus for Meta’s safety teams, and with reports set to rise over the next few days, now is a good time to raise awareness, and ensure that people know about the dangers.

You can read more about Meta’s romance scam detection and prevention efforts here.