Fake profiles, love scamming and sextortion: how to protect yourself on dating apps

Dating platforms and lifestyle networks run on trust, and that is exactly what fraudsters exploit. Anyone who uses couple profiles, personal ads or chats will sooner or later meet fake profiles, requests for money or threats involving intimate images. Drawing on the advice of Germany's police crime-prevention programme (ProPK, polizei-beratung.de), this guide explains how to recognise love scamming and sextortion and how to respond. Read on 7 November 2026.

Love scamming: how it works

In love scamming (also romance scamming), the offender builds emotional closeness over weeks and ends up asking for money. The police describe it on their page on romance fraud with typical warning signs:

• quick, effusive compliments and talk of a shared future before you have ever met,
• meetings that are cancelled again and again because of supposed accidents, illness or crime,
• urgent requests for money, for example for surgery or a plane ticket, often in cryptocurrency or gift cards.

The lifestyle scene adds a twist: couples and singles share private details quickly, and the wish for discretion can make people hesitate to voice doubts. Scammers know this.

The police "SHS" rule

The prevention programme sums up its advice in three German words: Stoppen, Hinterfragen, Schützen (stop, question, protect).

1. Stop: take your time. If someone creates intense feelings or pressure, pause; emotional manipulation is a core tool.
2. Question: is the story plausible? Has the person appeared on video or agreed to meet? Can it be checked independently? Talk to friends or family; outsiders often see more clearly.
3. Protect: never send money to someone you have not met in person.

Sextortion: blackmail with intimate recordings

The police define sextortion as blackmail using sexual images or videos. Offenders often build trust on social networks or dating apps, move the chat to a video call and record the victim undressing. They then threaten to publish it unless money is paid (often in bitcoin) or more material is sent. A variant is mass emails claiming compromising videos exist and demanding payment. According to the police, men are affected most often, but women and minors are targeted too.

If you are being blackmailed:

• Do not pay. The page warns: "the blackmail usually does not stop after payment".
• Do not meet any demands, cut contact and stop replying.
• Report it to the police and ask how to proceed, for instance whether to keep screenshots or the chat.
• Ask the platform to remove the material through its report function.
• Shame is understandable but no reason to stay silent: the police assume many cases go unreported for exactly that reason.

The police programme also offers a sextortion checklist produced with the BSI cybersecurity agency.

Everyday prevention

• Do not send nude images to people you do not know in person.
• Do not accept requests from strangers and share little personal data publicly.
• Be careful with video chats with new contacts; covering the webcam is an option.
• Keep your operating system and security software updated; malware can switch cameras on.
• If you want discretion, avoid faces, names and employers in profiles, since photos can be traced with image search. More in our guide to lifestyle profiles and apps.
• Meet in a public place the first time and tell someone you trust.

If it has already happened

Cut contact immediately, keep all messages as evidence, report the profile to the platform and consider filing a police report. If you have already sent money, do not wait: speak to your bank and the police straight away. In immediate danger in Germany, call 110. And if you can, share your experience to warn others, without exposing yourself.

Germany, Austria, Switzerland

ProPK's advice is aimed at Germany. For Austria and Switzerland we have not analysed official pages of our own; the Swiss national cybersecurity centre's page was not accessible when we researched. There, contact the local police and check which reporting bodies are responsible.

Sources (accessed 7 November 2026): Police Crime Prevention of the German Länder and the Federation, "Romance Scamming / Liebesbetrug" and "Sextortion".