During the 4th quarter of 2023 Facebook took action on 691 million fake accounts, down from 827 million in the previous quarter. Meta considers fake accounts to be those that are created with malicious intent, or created to represent a business, organization, or non-human entity.

Social media is not the only venue for fake profiles to appear. In 2019, The Federal Trade Commission sued online dating service Match Group, Inc. (Match), the owner of Match.com, Tinder, OKCupid, PlentyOfFish, and other dating sites, alleging that the company used fake love interest advertisements to trick hundreds of thousands of consumers into purchasing paid subscriptions on Match.com. A recent Social Catfish report indicated that their research reflected that around 10% of the profiles on Match.com are fake. The FTC noted:

Consumers who considered purchasing a Match.com subscription generally were unaware that as many as 25 to 30 percent of Match.com members who register each day are using Match.com to attempt to perpetrate scams, including romance scams, phishing schemes, fraudulent advertising, and extortion scams

In 2024, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported that losses in 2023 by those over 60 exceeded $3.4 billion, an 11% increase from 2022. Among these, 6,740 seniors were victims of Confidence/Romance schemes, often involving fake profiles on social media or dating sites. Total losses due to these schemes to those over 60 were reported at $356,888,968.

These fake profiles are often images of real individuals that have been stolen by the fraudsters. However, with artificial intelligence (AI) online fraudsters can generate entirely fake images. The image presented in this blog is entirely an AI generated image created merely by typing in text into an online AI program.

Todd and I have submitted our manuscript Surviving a Cyberattack: Securing Social Media and Protecting Your Home to Mercury Learning and Information, an Imprint of De Gruyter Inc. and it should be published early fall. It covers protecting yourself, your love ones, and small businesses from cybercrime. Look for future announcements about this important upcoming book.

For now check out FBI Special Agent Christine Beining describing romance scams