Common scams and how they work

This is the most common by a wide margin. You are asked to send a deposit to secure the booking, usually by gift card, crypto, or a money transfer service. You send it and the account goes quiet.

The payment method is the tell. Gift cards and crypto are chosen because they cannot be reversed. Nobody legitimate needs your booking secured with an iTunes code.

Photos get lifted from social media and other directories, then reused across dozens of listings. The same face turns up in five cities in the same week.

You can check this yourself in about a minute. Save one of the photos and run a reverse image search on Google Images or TinEye. If the same picture appears on unrelated profiles or on a modelling site, you have your answer.

Someone tells you they need you to be verified first, and points you at a site that takes your card details for a small charge. The site is theirs. The small charge becomes a recurring one, and now they have your card.

No genuine advertiser needs you to register with a third party. If a platform verifies anyone, it verifies the people advertising on it, and it does not charge you to browse.

This one comes later. After contact has happened, a message arrives threatening to send screenshots or photos to your family or your employer unless you pay.

Paying makes it worse every single time. It confirms the threat works and the demands continue. Stop replying, save everything, block the number, and report it. If it escalates, this is a criminal matter and the police are the right place for it, not a negotiation.

Act quickly, and do not spend the day deciding whether to feel embarrassed about it. These are practised operations and they catch careful people.

Card payments can sometimes be charged back if you call your bank the same day. Bank transfers occasionally can be recalled if the receiving account has not emptied yet. Gift cards and crypto are almost never recoverable, which is exactly why they were asked for. Report the profile either way, because it stops the next person losing money.