Dating Site Where Women Are In Control

While women technically hold the power on most dating sites, they can still be scary places. After all, a woman can only get so many unsolicited dick pics before they run screaming for the hills. ❤ Meetville - dating site for women in United States, where thousands of single ladies searching men for love, chat & relationship!

Tinder has changed the way we meet, but is increasingly proving a turn-off for female users sick of the misogyny it attracts. Now a new generation of app developers is fighting back

Meeting new people in person is not easy always easy in the digital age, so many women are going online to forge new friendships.

What is a dominant woman? It’s a woman with a strong personality who likes to take the lead and be in control in all spheres of her life, including romantic relationships. Such women are often. Bumble is easily one of the best dating sites for women because it puts women first — literally. When a man matches with a woman on the dating app, he won’t be able to send any messages until she does.

Last modified on Thu 23 Nov 2017 11.14 GMT

It’s 4am on a Tuesday when my phone pings. Still in the depths of sleep, I reach out and grab it, knocking a cold cup of coffee over the unread mountain of books on my bedside. I swear loudly, mop up the mess with one hand and look blearily at the message on my screen. It’s from Otis, 27, who I have apparently just matched with on Tinder: “Hey sexy like ur curls. Wanna come over n get naked and I’ll show you my curls.”

And that was the day I deleted Tinder.

There is no denying that the pursuit of love in the 21st century has become littered with digital landmines. There are now more than 91 million people around the world on dating apps – and most of that is thanks to Tinder. The first dating phone app of its kind, Tinder arrived on the scene in 2012, first in US colleges before spreading outwards, nationally and internationally, from Rome and London to Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town. The concept itself was simple – make people’s image front and centre, emulating how we first encounter people in real life, and ensure only people who have mutually approved each other’s profiles can start chatting. And finally, make it as simple and addictive as a game.

Thanks to humanity’s universal enjoyment of passing aesthetic judgment on others, the app has grown at a phenomenal rate. In January it was reported that Tinder makes 21 million matches and processes 1.5 billion swipes every day – as of the start of this year, it had made 5 billion matches.

But it has also emerged as a place where women regularly have to put up with the kind of sexist, vulgar and aggressive messages that, if said in real life, would see you instantly shunned as a pervert. Entire websites, blogs and even books have sprung up – such as the Instagram accounts tindernightmares.com and ByeFelipe – documenting the daily obscenities received, unprompted and unwanted, by millions of women. They can range from the relatively harmless (“I am sensing that you have magical boobs”) to the aggressive, with words such as “slut” bandied about freely.

Indeed, during the 48 hours I dabbled with the dating app, Otis’s 4am message – while proving the straw that broke the camel’s back – was on the tame end of the scale. Even my male friends acknowledge it happening among their peers. Speaking to Oliver, 26, he recounted how he had been sitting with a friend who, flicking through Tinder, had matched with two girls in quick succession. Instantly he sent them both a pornographic message. I’m appalled, I say. What kind of person is he? “Oh, a really nice guy, just come out of a seven-year relationship. He’s really quiet and likes krautrock,” says Oliver. Why the messages then? Oliver shrugs. “Because he can, I guess. It’s horrible, but no one’s going to call him out on it.”

Much of the blame for the unpleasant experiences had by women on dating apps has been put down them being mainly developed in the “boys-club culture” of Silicon Valley. It is an environment where only 11% of executives are women, an imbalance that seems to have filtered into the mindset of many dating apps. According to one developer, this has been perpetuated by the fact that dating sites and apps still make most of their revenue from men.

“The biggest problem is women have always been ignored as a customer group,” he said. “Because no one has ever addressed the creep factor, women are constantly chased off dating websites and apps. So from a dating company perspective, they know that women are very fragile on the site and so often can’t be monetised. Therefore men have always been the focus, which has just perpetuated the problem.”

However, the tide appears to be turning. A new generation of app developers, many of them women,

are launching a digital fightback through a wave of female-orientated dating platforms.

From apps where women are the

gatekeepers to initiating conversations, to others where men can only be invited by women, the movement to ensure digital dating is no less fun for women is quickly gathering momentum. And the woman leading the charge is not who you might expect.

I meet Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe in the airy surroundings of Perla’s restaurant in Austin, Texas, where lobsters and other edible crustaceans leer down at us from vast fish tanks. The chatty waiter who comes to take our orders opens with: “Howdy y’all,” in his friendly Texan drawl, and a stream of people dressed in cowboy hats, tassels and tie-dye filter past the window, on their way to the city’s famous South by Southwest festival. We are 1,242 miles away from Los Angeles, the home of Tinder, and 1,500 miles away from Silicon Valley, but frankly we could be in another world entirely.

Wolfe, 25, lives here partly because it is the home of her oil tycoon boyfriend, but also because it signifies a distance that is both physical and metaphorical between her and her former life. Last year, she found herself the reluctant subject of a notably unpleasant media furore after she launched a lawsuit against Tinder – the company she had worked at as both co-founder and head of marketing for almost three years. Her complaint was sexual harassment and discrimination against fellow co-founders, Justin Mateen and Sean Rad, alleging that when her romantic relationship with Mateen turned sour, he had sent her a stream of “horrendously sexist, racist, and otherwise inappropriate comments, emails, and text messages”. After Rad allegedly refused to deal with the situation, and even threatened to fire Wolfe, she resigned from the company.

The resulting legal showdown – which was played out entirely in the public eye last summer – proved nasty and malicious, bringing out the worst in Silicon Valley’s notoriously misogynist culture. “Oh the irony,” screamed the internet. “The founder of a hook-up website is claiming sexual harassment.”

Wolfe’s role in setting up Tinder was called into question by Mateen and Rad, and the stream of vindictive texts Mateen had sent to her was published online.

The saga was eventually settled out of court last September with no admission of wrongdoing from either party. Wolfe was given a reported $1m settlement and stock in the company, while Mateen left his executive role at Tinder, closely followed by Rad.

Open, warm and endearingly verbose, Wolfe becomes a closed book at the mention of Tinder: “The lawsuit was not about money, that is not what motivates me and it is not how I find fulfilment,” she says. “But I felt I had played an important role at Tinder and they tried to erase me from the company’s history. It was about being recognised for my work.”

She sighs. “Look, the Tinder story is very tired. I find it really upsetting that the lawsuit still defines my story and I’m qualified by what happened at Tinder rather than the fact I am now a successful female CEO of a tech company at 25.”

Indeed, it is this new venture that is the main reason behind our meeting. Bumble, which she set up just over six months ago, has swiftly established itself as one of the pioneering new dating apps designed to improve the experience for women.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem all that different from Tinder. Profiles are connected to your Facebook (to prevent the use of fake profiles you have to have a certain number of friends to sign up) and users can scroll through pictures, swiping left to dismiss and right to match up.

The game element that makes Tinder so addictive remains. But it has a few fundamental differences, mainly that once a match is made it is only the woman who can strike up the conversation. If they don’t talk to their match within 24 hours, the guy disappears.

The thought behind it, says Wolfe, is simple. Having spoken to so many women who had been put off dating apps by a constant stream of creepy, uninitiated and often abusive messages from men, there seemed an obvious need for a platform that offered some level of female empowerment in the digital dating sphere. Revealingly, Wolfe admits she has never once used Tinder.

I tell her I have some less admirable male friends who swipe right on everyone, without any discretion, just to increase their matches and chances of a hook-up. She nods. “That can be pretty common on certain dating apps. But Bumble gives the man a chance to not feel like the aggressor, and gives the woman a chance to take a little more control than society says is OK and steer the conversation from the beginning. This is all about women reclaiming that online dating space.”

Wolfe adds: “What we are trying to be is the radical first step, because if someone doesn’t then nothing will change. Bumble is about establishing equality. I can’t speak on behalf of the entire male population, but in my experience when a man feels rejected, or fears being rejected, they respond with aggression. So if we eliminate the rejection, what is there to be aggressive about?”

But before we get down to the nitty gritty of whether such an approach is attractive, or even viable, to the young single masses, I have to ask Wolfe why she would possibly want to get back into the world of dating apps? After everything that happened at Tinder, wasn’t she not tempted to retreat to a quiet corner of the world and just open a bookshop or take up gardening?

Wolfe laughs and shakes her head. It’s clear that for a born entrepreneur who, at 19, set up her own successful business at Southern Methodist University designing charity tote bags, gardening is not really on the cards. “It was a no-brainer that I would stay doing something in technology, but to begin with I didn’t want to go back into the dating space at all,” she concedes. “It was not even a thought for me.”

She was convinced otherwise by Andrey Andreev, the Russian entrepreneur who co-founded the billion-pound social network Badoo, which, while not enormous in the UK, has 250 million users worldwide. Having met Wolfe while she was working at Tinder, he got in touch with her last August to discuss a new joint business venture.

Wolfe initially wanted to make a positive social platform “somewhere between Snapchat and Instagram” that would encourage only positive behaviour between young people online. Andreev loved the angle of social responsibility and empowerment, but persuaded her to channel the ideas back into the turbulent world of dating apps. And so Bumble was born.

Alongside turning the accepted social convention of men “always making the first move” on its head, part of Bumble’s raison d’être is championing that elusive concept of online accountability. It is most evident in its photo messaging. While matched users can send pictures to each other, each is watermarked with their name and photo, discouraging anyone from sending something (naked shots, for example) that they do not want screen-shot and forever attached to their identity online.

But does Wolfe agree that the fundamental flaw in dating apps so far is that they are built by men, operating in a highly sexist environment?

“In the past, women were brought in for perspective but they were not brought in to lead,” she says. “But as we know, getting her to give an isolated input is very different from putting it in her hands and letting her take charge.”

“It’s interesting, because there’s this age-old question of, ‘What do women want, what makes women tick?’ Well, it seems obvious – put a woman in charge and she will show you. And I think that is what we are beginning to see happen with apps like Bumble.”

She may well be right. Female empowerment in the world of dating apps now seems to be en vogue in the world of tech startups, and even Tinder, as part of its new subscription Plus package launched in March, has introduced new reporting systems to try to stop men behaving badly. This new generation of dating apps includes the controversial Lulu, where women can publicly rate men on everything from appearance to sexual performance, and The Grade, which lets users score each other on the quality of their messages and speed at replying, therefore hopefully weeding out any creeps.

I speak to Susie Lee, the creator behind another such “female-friendly” app called Siren, where a woman’s photos are hidden to men until she chooses to match with them.

Lee, who is a digital artist with a background in molecular biophysics, set it up less than a year ago because she felt the current models were unsafe and exposed, particularly for women. “If you allow women to control their photo visibility then it does two things very elegantly and quickly – one, it allows women to feel safer about navigating online socially and, two, it allows men to have a clear, more personal signal about who’s interested in them and puts a stop to those aimlessly aggressive interactions. It also stops people, be it your clients, your students, or your boss, seeing your full profile on the app, which women have also said was very important to them.”

The app’s “siren call” feature lets women broadcast temporary messages to all men or only a select few, encouraging spur-of-the-moment dates. While it is currently only available on the west coast of America, Siren has proved so popular it is expanding globally in the summer.

Even more interesting is Wyldfire, which proves it is not only women taking on the so-called “creep factor”. Brian Freeman and Andrew White set up the app last year after both came out of long-term relationships and quickly lost faith in Tinder.

“The bottom line was that your everyday girl was not super-enthusiastic about the prospect of using an online dating app to find a meaningful relationship, because it had just become associated with hookups and having to deal with creepy or aggressive behaviour,” said Freeman, 31. “But we didn’t think it needed to be that way. So we went and asked women: well, what do you want out of a dating app? It turned out be security, safety and enough information to make a decent decision. And the best way to do that in our minds was to have the women vet the men.”

Wyldfire’s initial unique selling point is that only men invited by women could be a part of the app, though it has recently introduced an “election” feature where men can offer themselves up, without the recommendation of a female, to have their profile vetted by the women of Wyldfire who will decide if they should be let into the community. In a bid to get its members meeting up in real life, it has also limited the first interaction to 20 messages. “We’ve struck a chord,” said Freeman, citing the fact that the app has more than a 1,000 new members signing up every day.

“Our point is, how much better would it be for everyone if women did not expect to receive those disgusting one-liners?” added Freeman. “We wanted to re-create the better parts of life online and we don’t want to isolate men, or make them feel sub-par or a different class of citizen, because we are also guys. So we want women to feel safe and we want guys to feel challenged.”

Back in London, I am intrigued to see how my male friends respond to the idea behind Bumble. After all, for a successful heterosexual dating app, you need both sexes on board.

Wolfe had assured me that men love it and to prove her point she took me through the eligible men in Austin that Bumble has to offer, including several clean-shaven lawyers, a very muscly man called Wally, who seemed overly into hiking, and a trilingual artist. All impressive, but were they exceptions?

Fred, 26, who just came out of a three-year relationship, jumps at the concept of Bumble. “I hate the pressure of always having to make the first move,” he tells me. “And so many girls on Tinder seem so jaded by the whole thing and never reply anyway, it feels like a wasted effort.”

On my instruction he signs up to Bumble, starts swiping through the profiles and soon matches with a girl called Charmaine.

“Hiya hun, how are you?” she messages him not soon after. I don’t want to intrude, but I text Fred a few days later. So what’s the verdict on Bumble? Is it true love with Charmaine?

He texts back. “Charmaine happened to be into Comic Con. I am not. I wished her all the best, but not my cup of tea.”

“Ah well, Fred,” I reply. “Better luck next time.”

Which goes to show that while dating apps might be on their way to weeding out sexism, chemistry will be a harder problem to solve.

WOMEN-FRIENDLY DATING APPS

SIREN

Here, women are given control of their visibility and are required to make the first move to create an online environment where they don’t feel unsafe. Profiles are built up over time from responses to daily questions generating a more accurate picture of people’s character.

WYLDFIRE

This “men by invitation-only” app hopes to create a network of desirable gents. Women can sign up freely but men need to be invited by the female users in an attempt to reduce the number of “creeps”.

BUMBLE

On the surface, Bumble seems similar to Tinder, but women hold all the power. The notorious swiping left and right remains. However, once matched, conversations must start within 24 hours or they will disappear and can only be initiated by women.

THE GRADE

Somewhat brutally, The Grade lives up to its name and marks users from A+ to F depending on th eir popularity, quality of messages and responsiveness. Users need to make a D average or higher, or they will be banned from the app.

THE CATCH

Women browse men’s profiles and invite any they like to play something similar to Blind Date. The first four men who agree are set three questions to answer. Any responses are kept anonymous until a winner is chosen by the female inquirer.

THE LEAGUE

Users’ LinkedIn profiles are mined to provide potential matches considered professionally and educationally equal. Despite being criticised as elitist, the app has some merits. Only five individuals are presented to users per day, removing the “binge swiping” which is frequently associated with Tinder and other dating apps.

HAPPN

Designed to help you meet people whose path you have crossed, the app shows users within a 250-metre radius and tells you how many times you have been in the same area. You then hit the red love heart if you want to connect and wait to see if it’s mutual.

DATTCH

One way to ensure no unwelcome male attention is to use Dattch, the UK-based lesbian dating app. It allows users to upload pictures of themselves and also of things they like that can convey their personality.

Dating Site Where Women Are In Control Crossword Clue

“Wasted Money and Broken Hearts” could have been the chorus of a Hank Williams song if he sang about dating scams. You get defrauded, tricked, fooled, and deeply embarrassed.

It is a financial crime, but also an emotional crime. It is a sad, sad song and you don’t need to a steel guitar playing backup to understand the pain it causes.

Dating fraud hurts because you took a risk for someone you believed in. You listened, you understood, and you trusted this person that you had never met.

In some regards, getting scammed simply proves you are a good person, BUT it is still abominable.

Fear about dating scams is one of the main reasons that men are reluctant to pursue international dating, but is this really a problem just for mail order bride sites?

Or to put it another way, are you more likely to be ripped off on Amolatina than you are on domestic dating sites or from meeting a beautiful woman in a hotel bar?

Well, one piece of good news is that the most recent academic research has proven is marriage fraud is not nearly the issue for couples that meet on international dating site as the mainstream media has portrayed.

In fact, there are FEWER divorces among these couples than among couples in general.

That means that concerns about “green card” marriages where the woman is simply marrying the man to get permanent residency in the United States, Western Europe, Australia, or another first world country are generally a myth.

Don’t believe me? Check out this article: Divorce and Mail Order Brides it is load with links to academic research that proves its assertion that these marriages are legit.

Romance in The Internet Age

Online romance creates an almost perfect situation for dedicated professional scammers. In many regards, online romance breaks some of the most basic human mating rules and sets EVERYONE up to get scammed.

Serious men and women, wannabe playboys and hot gold digger can all be scammed or at least bitterly disappointed if they are not careful

The most basic mistake that trips up everyone who gets tangled up in an internet dating scam is that the internet is the most powerful communication tool in human history. Sometimes it is easy to forget that, but it is truly amazing.

Think about it.

You can be sitting in Burger King in Sedalia, Missouri looking at hot Russian women on your phone. You can type a message to a tall blond in Moscow who is one of the sexiest women in all of Russia.

You hit send and sometimes in less than ten seconds, you will get a message back from a Russian goddess who looks like she could be Putin’s favorite mistress.

At least, that is who is supposed to be texting you, but… how do you really know for sure who is really texting you?

Today we are so used to this we do not stop and think about it, but it is truly incredible. For most of human history, the only way to communicate was face to face.

Even letters are a recent development in the grand scheme of human history and were mostly reserved for kings, generals, and captains of finance for the first couple of millennia they existed.

Even in the early years of the United States – before about 1810 – the average American probably received only a handful of letters over the course of their lifetime.

Postal rates were expensive, roads were poor, and the nearest post offices was probably miles away across swamps, forests, mountains, or prairie.

What this means is that most of us tend to treat communication from someone over the internet the same way we would as face to face communication. That is the basic human default because for 99.99% of human history face to face communication was the only type of communication.

This is the reason why people imagine they know celebrities they have seen on television or the internet.

These celebrities try hard to communicate with their fans and because for most of human history – where the vast majority of people lived in small groups of less than a hundred – if someone communicated with you then you actually did have a personal relationship with them.

Internet scammers understand this human frailty and like movie stars, politicians, and car salesmen they do their best to exploit it.

In order to avoid letting this weakness overwhelm your good judgment, you need to recognize it and address it.

Go Slow

Treat your online relationship with the same type of judgment and respect as you would a face to face relationship. Sometimes things go really fast online, but try not to commit to anything until you actually meet the woman you are communicating with.

In real life, most of us would never meet someone and propose to them after a couple of hours of talking, but sometimes that happens online.

Sometimes online relationships get turbocharged because the distance can create a sense of comfort and get us to reveal deeply personal information very early in the relationship. That creates a sort of warp drive effect where you get very serious very quickly.

Instead, make small talk. Ask about their favorite books and movies. Talk about your job and your home town. Take your time baring your soul, because that will tend to ratchet up the emotional intensity.

Just try to treat it like you would if you were seated next to a hot woman on a long plane trip. You would not tell her your deepest erotic fantasies before the first the plane reached cruising altitude, not if you didn’t want to find out who the Air Marshall actually was.

At the same time, you need to develop an understanding of the basic anatomy of an online dating scam.

A Guide to The Basic Types of Online Dating Scams

This is a short review of the most common type of scams that professional scammers run.

Fake Profile Scam

By far the most common scam on-line is the fake profile scam.

These scammers target victims by creating fake profiles on internet dating sites. Once you are in contact with a scammer they will express strong emotions for you in a relatively short period of time.

Scammers will take months to build what seems like the romance of a lifetime. Once they have gained your trust they will ask you (either subtly or directly) for money, gifts or banking/credit card details. They will pretend to need these for a variety of reasons.

For example…

They may claim to be in the depths of a financial crisis or in need of a new computer to continue chatting with you.

The scammer may claim to have fallen ill or been involved in a serious accident (sick mothers are also a favorite ruse). They will then ask you for money to pay the medical bills. In some instances, you may even be contacted by someone claiming to be their doctor.

This is one reason you should steer away from small, new, or free dating sites.

Female profiles are the lifeblood of the internet dating business. If you can get profiles for 10000 hot girls you can instantly build a great site and make a lot of money, because men will find your site if the girls are hot.

So, weak, small sites do not tend to make a huge effort to weed out the fakes. The need profiles of hot women and if they get really desperate they will simply create fake profiles to stay in business.

The most extreme example of this was the Ashley Madison scandal where the company created hundreds of thousands of female profiles for its site because it turned out not many women were interested in having an affair with a stranger they met online.

Go figure.

Anyhow, if you have never read anything about it this is a hilarious article that explains 99% of women’s profiles were fake.

Most of the companies we promote make an effort to screen their profiles because they realize that it would be a public relations disaster and could lead to lawsuits if they were simply allowing anyone to post anything.

Dating Site Where Women Are In Control Of Dogs

So, they are generally fairly careful, but the two agencies that the staff here at International Love Scout know make a huge effort to vet profiles are Elena’s Models and A Foreign Affair.

Visa & Airfare Scam

Another common scam is the Visa and Airfare Scam.

In this scam, after falling madly in love with you, your new flame will enthusiastically plan a trip to come to visit you in your home country…

Unfortunately, she doesn’t make enough money at her job so she will need you to send money for her Visa and Airfare.

If you take the bait and send the first round of money – she will then tell you that the Embassy requires her to have a minimum of $1,000 in her bank account before they will grant the Visa, so can you kindly send $1,000 which she will refund to you when she arrives at your house in Texas.

Of course, after sending the money she disappears with your $1000 dollars, never to be heard from again!

The insidious thing about all of these scams is that they sound so plausible when delivered by an expert con artist. Much smarter men than you have been taken in by these scams!

How to Protect Yourself from Online Dating Scams

As promised, here are 8 tips on how to protect yourself while looking for love online:

1. Never Send Money!

One of the biggest traps that some western men fall into is being taken advantage of for their money. While the majority of foreign women are genuine and are looking for love there is a small calculating minority that just wants to wring cash out of western men.

Fortunately, there is a pretty simple solution to this problem…

Never send a girl money!

Never send any money until you have actually visited the women in her own country and you are completely satisfied that she is one hundred percent genuine in her intentions.

Even when visiting her in her country do not go tossing money around on things like lavish shopping sprees. It can be tempting to try and win her heart by giving her money but do not fall into this trap. You don’t want to attract a gold digger.

Of course, you should pay for any dates that you go on as this is the natural role of a male in most of these countries.

2. Never Reveal Personal Information

Never reveal personal data to someone until you meet face-to-face and develop a level of trust. While it’s tempting to share every detail of your life with a person you think you could be in love with, that’s exactly what the scammer is counting on.

Be very wary if your new flame starts asking for your home address or what bank you use or asks for your credit card info.

I know this sounds pretty obvious but you would be surprised at the skill of these Con men (yes many are men posing as women) and their ability to wrench sensitive information out of their unsuspecting victims.

3. Spot Fake Profiles

Pay attention to both the profile picture and the user name. Of course, a foreign woman will want to entrance you with her beauty but you should be wary of women that are dressed in what would be considered a sleazy manner.

Also if their user name has direct sexual connotations you want to beware. These are often not genuine ladies looking for love.

Many online scammers use a photo they’ve swiped from someone else’s Facebook page or from a modeling website.

Luckily there are some technologies on-line that will help you find online dating scammer photos, so you can see if that beautiful Ukrainian girl you’ve been communicating with is using a picture of a Russian Super Model in her dating profile.

The article will show you how to upload your potential paramour’s photo to Google Image Search to see where else on-line that picture appears.

Alternatively, you can use a site called tineye.com – although I have found that it will give you far fewer results than Google.

4. Use Video Chat!

On most modern international dating sites you can prevent a fake profile scam by using video chat. Anastasia is pretty much the industry leader in chat, but Behappy2Day is another site with a great video system.

With video chat, you can see the woman you are communicating with in real-time. You can even do two-way chat and let her see you.

You can ask her to blow you a kiss or wave at you if you are really paranoid that you might just be watching a pre-recorded session.

You should be able to quickly determine that you are chatting with the same woman pictured in her profile.

That doesn’t mean she couldn’t be lying about something, but it means she looks like you expected her to look and eliminates the total fake situation.

If the scammer has been using a fake profile picture there is no way their ruse can survive if you insist on using video chat.

If the girl you have been communicating with keeps making excuses to avoid video chatting like she can’t find an internet café with a webcam, it might be time to cut your losses and move on.

The one company we represent that does not use video chat is A Foreign Affair, but that is because John Adams, the CEO, does not believe in chat. He thinks after the first couple of letters or chats you should try to meet the woman.

So, AFA’s main business is romance tours where you actually get meet women face to face.

Dating Site Where Women Are In Control Stories

5. Use a Legit International Dating Agency

Scammers are a bigger problem on free sites. It is estimated that 50% of all women on free sites are running some sort of scam.

These dating agencies know that unhappy customers can destroy their business in a hurry. The top agencies have extremely strong economic incentives to be sure that you are NOT scammed, so if you use a legit agency your chances of running across a fake profile scammer are slim to none.

If you frequent international dating message boards and chat rooms it’s pretty common to see guys complaining that they have been scammed by a dating agency.

I’m sure some of them have a legitimate complaint, but many of them just failed to read the fine print before they joined up.

The level of service varies widely among agencies and one of the main reasons some men believe they have been scammed is that they did not fully understand what the agency was offering.

Sites like Amolatina.com do a poor job of letting you know how much it will ultimately cost to communicate with those gorgeous Colombian women. So, when the chat fees start to add up guys scream foul.

Don’t get me wrong – the profiles are real and many men have met and married beautiful Latin women through the site.

But they have an aggressive business model where they try to get men to spend more than they intend and they are pretty successful because they have some of the sexiest Latin women you could ever imagine.

With any agency, be careful and budget your spending.

6. Check Out Scammer Databases

Be aware, there are some scammers trolling the dating sites who are REAL women using REAL pictures in their dating profiles. This makes these types of scammers much harder to spot than the basic Fake Profile Scammer.

On many of the big global dating sites, these women get shut down pretty quickly because of complaints from the male customers.

But, if you are using a free site you will need to take matters into your own hands.

Luckily there are several sites on-line that have posted photos and details about hundreds of known internet dating scam “personalities”.

If you think you are communicating with a scammer you can go to one of these sites and look for her picture in their database.

7. Be Realistic About What Constitutes a Scam

Realize that there is a difference between getting scammed by a girl and getting your heart broken. Even under the best of circumstances, most relationships don’t develop into passionate lifelong love affairs.

If a girl decides she is not interested in dating you that is not the same thing as being scammed.

Many men who don’t find the great love of their life through an international dating site often decide they’ve been scammed. The truth is, as long as the lady, the agency and the man were all acting in good faith no one scammed anyone.

As the old saying goes – “You can’t buy love” and it is impossible to control exactly how people will mesh with one another.

8. Use Your Common Sense

The best tool you have in your arsenal to fight on-line scammers is your brain… Use it!

If a girl asks you to do something that seems strange, like send her money for a plane ticket or reveal personal banking information…

Cut your losses and move on!

If you are a 75-year-old guy and some super-hot Brazilian bikini model professes her undying love to you after 2 conversations – be suspicious.

This article from CBS News has some really good points about the need to think critically about what people tell you on a dating site.

Scams are a real concern, but they shouldn’t make you spend the rest of your life avoiding beautiful women and the internet. If you show a little good sense you can reduce your risk and still meet some of the most amazing women in the world.

It’s not a bad deal.

9. Be the Guy They Want

Well, first ponder why all of these amazingly beautiful women are signing up on international dating sites?

You just learned that there is overwhelming evidence that the marriages that develop on international dating sites work. That suggests that the overwhelming number of women on these sites are serious about dating a Western man.

Dating Site Where Women Are In Control Crossword

It means that you can decrease your chances of getting scammed by paying attention to what the women want because most of the women really are looking, hoping, and dreaming about the perfect foreign man.

They know it is much better to marry a great guy than to scam him out of a hundred or even a thousand dollars.

This is true in every region of the world.

And here is the thing, the vast majority of women tell guys this in their profile that they are searching for a “serious relationship” and nearly all of them are being honest.

If you don’t believe that do a little research. For an easy example read about the cultural issues inspiring Russian mail order brides to sign up with dating agencies.

Those cultural issues are largely the same across Eastern Europe, but what determines whether there is a small stream of mail order brides or a torrent of beautiful, intelligent ladies is the state of a nation’s political and economic situation.

For instance, right now our Polish page is nearly bare because the Polish economy is booming, the country is part of the European Union, and the people are extremely upbeat.

Our Ukrainian section has hundreds of incredible women because there is simmering in the eastern part of the country and the economy is a mess.

In all of the Asian countries we cover, the cultural situation is the driving factor. If you do not believe that you need to stop and read our article about China’s Unmarriable Brides.

For these women and millions of other Asian women meeting a decent foreign man is like winning the lottery and that is a big part of why they are so kind and appreciative to good guys.

They know what their life would be like if they married a local man.

The story in Latin America is similar to Eastern Europe in terms of being a deeply patriarchal society that allows and even encourages machismo and discrimination against women.

That has led to a steady flow of women from Colombia, Costa Rica, and Brazil over the years, but the big flood of ladies looking for foreign men is driven by politics and economics.

Right now, Peru and Chile are not international dating hot spots because they have good economies and stable political situations.

Venezuela, the Central America countries, and even Mexico are all facing political instability and horrifying levels of criminal violence, and this is driving increased numbers of mail order brides from those regions.

So, if you are serious you have far less chance of being scammed than if you come off as a player. Does that mean that serious guys never get scammed – no. Does it mean that players always get scammed – no. The overwhelming majority of these women do not want to scam you they want to marry you.

But if you come off as a player or a jerk, if you don’t show these ladies a little respect and appreciation, you are painting a bullseye on your wallet. A significant number of these serious girls who are really hoping to meet prince charming are more than willing to play a player.

Even if you are more interested in dating that marriage don’t be a jerk or a cad. Be polite and kind and let the women know that you are a real person with a real heart who is not looking to hurt or mislead them.

That will keep you from becoming a target for the majority of women who are not really interested in scamming anyone, but it does not do you any good against the professional scam artists.

Should You Worry about Green Card Scams?

As we have already stated above the most recent academic research has proven that the vast majority of these women are not simply trying to marry so they can move to a more financially stable country and get a green card, or permanent residency, before filing for divorce.

Furthermore, your home country protects you from yourself to a certain extent.

In most countries, it is not possible for a woman to simply marry you and have full residency rights. If you marry abroad it will take between six to nine months for the process to be completed.

Dating Site Where Women Are In Control Crossword

This will provide you with plenty of time to decide whether the marriage is right for you.

If you are a US resident your fiancé can enter the country on the K-1 Fiancée visa. The visa is valid for ninety days before the marriage needs to take place.

Use this time to get to know the women that you intend to marry. Remember that if you feel that the connection is not there or something is not quite right about the relationship don’t be afraid to end the process.

The K-1 Fiancée visa requirements are there to protect you and so make sure that you are not being taken advantage of. While someone may be able to hide their true self for a few days it will be very difficult to maintain a facade for three months.

There are plenty more fish in the sea so don’t be swayed by your fiancée’s beauty. If the relationship does not feel right then simply try again.

Privacy And Online Dating

One of the biggest questions that guys are concerned about is their privacy. We cover this in our reviews, but essentially the safest agencies use reputable third-party payment processors, so they never see your credit card information and are based in the US, the EU, Australia, or another country with a strong criminal justice system.

Generally, those two things vastly reduce your worries about privacy.

However, if you are really obsessive we suggest that you create a free Yahoo or Hotmail account that you devote solely to your mail order bride adventure. That way you don’t even have to worry about spam.

Honestly, most of the staff here are signed up with numerous sites, far more than just the ones we review, and frankly, the emails are manageable. T

here are several sites that I know we will never review on ILS, but I still like seeing their new profiles and who they have matched me too.

The free sign-ups, which nearly every site offers, really are a great way to decide if you really want to go with a particular site and I highly recommend it because there is no downside.

Also, some of the sites run specials particularly for the people that are already signed up as free members, so that can be helpful too.

Final Thoughts About Online Dating Scams

You should take care of yourself online, but the odds of getting scammed in an international dating site are probably about the same as getting scammed on another dating site or getting conned by a woman you meet in the grocery store or at your local bar.

These fears of being ripped off are preyed upon by mainstream media which hypes and over sensationalizes stories of ill-fated foreign love affairs with the purpose of selling more newspapers and television ad space.

In reality, the danger of fraud is not nearly the monster the news makes it out to be nor is it complicated to spot and avoid. The vast majority of foreign women who are looking to date and marry men from other countries are honest ladies with sincere intentions.

They are looking for love, friendship and affection just like you guys are.

Yes, you could get scammed, but if you use a little common sense and follow the tips laid out below the chances are pretty slim.

If you want more information about online dating scams this article by the Better Business Bureau is the best single resource available. However, as you will see it focus almost exclusively on domestic sites which might even be easier to manipulate than international dating sites.

This article from Consumer Reports offers some of the same ideas to protect yourself as we have mentioned, but it is also a high-quality resource.

Here at International Love Scout, we have researched each site we feature girls from to ensure, to the best of our ability, that the sites are fair to your wallet and your heart.

We don’t feature sites that we believe are scams.

We give the straight scoop on scammers, players, and shady operators, and explain our approach to helping you find the love of your life.