Case Study: Romance Scams

Abstract

This chapter describes the romance scam, and an experiment performed to establish metrics around it, including a data collection tool we refer to as the simulated spam filter. We find that while traditional romance scams still account for the large majority of romance scam messages, affiliate marketing scams are increasingly becoming dominant in online dating sites. This type of scam attempts to lure the victim to third-party sites, often promising profile pictures or, under the pretense of identity validation, phishing for the victim’s credit card number. Our simulated spam filter study further shows that around 2 % of the scammers will click on links included in our auto-response emails, and that 5 % reply to our auto-response emails. Our results shed light on the extent to which romance scam operations are automated, and the approximate geographic location of the scammers.