Bogus Profiles with a Twist

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Bogus Profiles with a Twist

In a recent post, I wrote about a strange phenomenon in which what appear to be 28-year-old females become smitten with Lex but under circumstances that led me to believe they were neither 28 nor female.  Today I would like to tell a related story, a variation on the theme, if you will. 

After I gave my phone number out to one of these “females,” only to receive back an advertisement in my texting service, I quit giving out my number. Instead, I started playing cat-and-mouse with the people behind these bogus profiles, trying to smoke them out. I think they may have figured out that I was on to them because yesterday I was contacted by a 55-year-old woman . . . standing in front of another European monument.

Nice try.

I mean, I have to give them credit. I’m sure most 50-year-old guys would love to think that a 28-year-old woman was in love with them, or even just found them attractive. But let’s be realistic. How often does this happen when your name isn’t Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, or George Clooney? Almost never.

So when I quit coughing up the goods (my phone number), their counter punch was to go back to the drawing board and try and find someone more “age appropriate.” Sounds clever, but really, they need to work harder.

I’d guess less than 1% of Match members in the United States include as their profile pic a photo of them standing somewhere famous in Europe. Yet almost 100% of the bogus profiles post such pictures. No less important is the fact that these bogus profiles all look the same. In addition to still claiming to be students, the bogus profiles answer questions about their hobbies and dislikes by saying “I’ll tell you later.” Obviously, their only goal is to establish a profile and start hitting people up for personal information they can sell back to the fly-by-night company that hired them.

No different for the latest European vacationer who contacted me, even though this one was supposedly 55-years-old. No pertinent details of her life were revealed in her profile, other than she was in school studying for her masters. She spelled out her email phonetically. And when I suggested that instead of texting I’d like to meet in person, she claimed to be too busy “studying.”

Yikes.