Reporting fake profiles and spammers

[StrictMaster44]

Just now, FETMod-RG said:

You don't get notifications about removal. That decision is kept private.  What you should get is a notification thanking you for the report.  Is that what you mean?

Yes that

[FE****]

3 minutes ago, StrictMaster44 said:

 

Yes that

I heard there was an issue this week, I will check at tonight's meeting if it's a change in the notifications or a known issue.

[cr****]

1 hour ago, FETMod-RG said:

I heard there was an issue this week, I will check at tonight's meeting if it's a change in the notifications or a known issue.

I also sometimes don’t get notifications for my report being delivered.

This happens especially when I am in reporting mood and reporting multiple profiles in a short period of time.

This didn’t happens only this week.

And to come up with a question around reporting. It would be nice if there would be a more clear guideline on what to report.
Right now it feels to complicated.
If a user is using fake pictures, asking for *** and having their contact information on the profile… that would make it a candidate for scam. But what do I pick?
Do you even look at a profile entirely when there is a report or just the thing the profile is being reported for? Because I see a lot of profiles I report for using fake pictures. Where I add to the report my reverse google results, showing this pictures being on the internet for years. Those profiles sometimes come back. That doesn’t feels right.

And last but not least. Well… thanks for letting me report a profile. But scammers have automated their profile creations here on Fet. It is just a joke to let us report profiles while seeing them coming up with a new profile just within hours.
Fixing this is your responsibility and not on the users to flag every account.

Also trying to hide contact information with stars is a joke. The moment you detect contact information which are against your rules, which is a reason to report a profile… the profile should be looked and not having a text with **** and a clear username for whatever.

Long story short. Fet is not doing their job on removing clear profile validations and expecting people to report it and then even reporting is not a guarantee those ***s gonna fixed.

[FE****]

58 minutes ago, crane_ said:

Also trying to hide contact information with stars is a joke. The moment you detect contact information which are against your rules, which is a reason to report a profile… the profile should be looked and not having a text with **** and a clear username for whatever.

It hides the information whilst it can be looked at and is an app store requirement.

[ey****]

4 hours ago, crane_ said:

If a user is using fake pictures, asking for *** and having their contact information on the profile… that would make it a candidate for scam. But what do I pick?

If it's all 3 - go for finacial - that is usually taken the most seriously!

If there's no *** ask but the photos are clearly fake (i.e. you can recognise who they are impostering or it's clear AI) I'd go for that

and if it's just a casual browse and no *** ask, photos you're unsure on - but there's a reference to any other site, report as contact info - though, a lot of men seem to get away with this more cos of course people are less likely to go hunting for men who scam 

[SlightTech]

7 hours ago, crane_ said:

I also sometimes don’t get notifications for my report being delivered.

This happens especially when I am in reporting mood and reporting multiple profiles in a short period of time.

This didn’t happens only this week.

And to come up with a question around reporting. It would be nice if there would be a more clear guideline on what to report.
Right now it feels to complicated.
If a user is using fake pictures, asking for *** and having their contact information on the profile… that would make it a candidate for scam. But what do I pick?
Do you even look at a profile entirely when there is a report or just the thing the profile is being reported for? Because I see a lot of profiles I report for using fake pictures. Where I add to the report my reverse google results, showing this pictures being on the internet for years. Those profiles sometimes come back. That doesn’t feels right.

And last but not least. Well… thanks for letting me report a profile. But scammers have automated their profile creations here on Fet. It is just a joke to let us report profiles while seeing them coming up with a new profile just within hours.
Fixing this is your responsibility and not on the users to flag every account.

Also trying to hide contact information with stars is a joke. The moment you detect contact information which are against your rules, which is a reason to report a profile… the profile should be looked and not having a text with **** and a clear username for whatever.

Long story short. Fet is not doing their job on removing clear profile validations and expecting people to report it and then even reporting is not a guarantee those ***s gonna fixed.

I reported multiple profiles the other day with clear ***s. A couple were pretty obvious because they were using pictures of the same person on multiple profiles and they had contact information in the pictures.

Some of the profiles were still active several hours after I made the reports and after I made repeat reports to the same profile.

I think fetish needs to put more effort into preventing these types of accounts from being made instead of relying on users to report them. The foundation is already there with account verification, why not just make that mandatory when setting up the account instead of being optional until a moderator flags an account?

To me it seems like the people running this site aren't interested in quality of life for their users and mostly interested in profitability. I don't have the technical knowledge to know what the primary differences are that make them different or better at it, but FetLife is so much better at handling their website and minimizing the amount of fake profiles and scammers that are active on the website.

I like that the only feature they really put behind a paywall is watching videos, but pretty much everything else on the website is functional for free accounts. And it seems like the people who run the site are a lot more proactive with making a site that works well. Yeah, it's a little more basic and not ideal for finding people to hookup with, but I also know that a majority of accounts are legitimate and problematic users don't stay active for long.

It might also have to do more with it being a community focused site versus a dating/hookup focused site. I've noticed on just about every major dating app out there that scammers like to prey on desperate and lonely people.

[ve****]

I am very interested in this topic since I see a lot of fake profiles, scammers, and AI bots or chat bots. I think it would be helpful for the moderators or some one to provide a list of tells which raise red flags or provide tells. Some things might include:
Sparse info on profiles
Not answering any or many of the questions
Single or double photos only
Less activity over a period of time
Fast initial contacts from out of the blue
Asking very generic questions such as what do you expect about of this site
Being inconsistent with their profiles
Etc.
Then perhaps how the user can help ferret out the issues such as
Ask them about specific things in ther location if they are familiar to you
Looking for perfectly spelled responses since AI rarely makes misspelling errors unless programmed to do so
Background of photos such as tropical when the are located in the Midwest etc

My point is that there a multitude of things the user can do to spot fakes and those should be high light to at least *** the fakers to up their game

Finally we will all lose this community if we do not help the moderators in the fight. Make the reports when it becomes suspicious, do our own due diligence. Help by adding to the list of tells, and don’t pass by the profiles and photos that are known fakes such as old movie stars or politicians or whatever.

We all have a role to play and it will just get worse if we do not all chip in. I even sometimes just answer chats and talk with them to see if they are fakes and should be reported. Just some thoughts but we are going to lose if we sit back with apathy.

[ey****]

56 minutes ago, venice616468 said:

I think it would be helpful for the moderators or some one to provide a list of tells which raise red flags or provide tells. Some things might include:

one of the kinda problems at times is that pretty much every 'tell' also has a valid reason 

So for example there are people with incomplete or sparse info on profiles due to anything from lack of time, laziness, uncertainty. Photo count means nothing. Activity means nothing, real people take breaks.  A lot of men ask very generic questions! 

Even stuff like photos that don't match location - people are allowed holidays!

I'd say even the main things that the person expresses an interest in you quickly and wants to move to a dynamic quickly whilst is a big tell, is also something men do all the time!   

So you have to use your own sniff test. Do things seem too good to be true? Then it's probably not.  If someone wants you to spend *** (even if it's not on THEM) prior to a meeting then it's a sign something a miss and spending *** could be pointing you to a website to buy toys or book a dungeon. Equally arrangign to meet you in a dungeon without an old coffee first or other verifiable chat - or, well, offering to own you again without having me.  All these are stuff which fail the sniff test.  

The thing is, of course, is just because they fail your sniff test (a good reason to stop engaging with them) doesn't mean there is evidence of wrong doing

trying to take you to other platforms to chat is also an issue since evidence gathered there can't be used as evidence of wrong doing on thsi site

The main thing is if they seem unreasonably interested in you - sniff test

There are things which are not allowed which may be a sign something is up but not necessarily enough to get them banned from the site. Asking for ***, yes.  Using photos which are blatantly fake, yes (but you may need proof it's not them), having contact info in their profile, yes (though the site may ask them to remove it, but it wouldn't be bannable on it's own)

Like, as well, even if the person is totally real - if it fails your sniff test, there's no reason to continue conversing with them anyway 

[SlightTech]

3 hours ago, venice616468 said:

I am very interested in this topic since I see a lot of fake profiles, scammers, and AI bots or chat bots. I think it would be helpful for the moderators or some one to provide a list of tells which raise red flags or provide tells. Some things might include:
Sparse info on profiles
Not answering any or many of the questions
Single or double photos only
Less activity over a period of time
Fast initial contacts from out of the blue
Asking very generic questions such as what do you expect about of this site
Being inconsistent with their profiles
Etc.
Then perhaps how the user can help ferret out the issues such as
Ask them about specific things in ther location if they are familiar to you
Looking for perfectly spelled responses since AI rarely makes misspelling errors unless programmed to do so
Background of photos such as tropical when the are located in the Midwest etc

My point is that there a multitude of things the user can do to spot fakes and those should be high light to at least *** the fakers to up their game

Finally we will all lose this community if we do not help the moderators in the fight. Make the reports when it becomes suspicious, do our own due diligence. Help by adding to the list of tells, and don’t pass by the profiles and photos that are known fakes such as old movie stars or politicians or whatever.

We all have a role to play and it will just get worse if we do not all chip in. I even sometimes just answer chats and talk with them to see if they are fakes and should be reported. Just some thoughts but we are going to lose if we sit back with apathy.

I think there needs to be a more proactive approach to weeding out the bots and scammers. Because it doesn't really solve the problem if the only action being taken is after someone reports the account.

A lot of the lazy ones are pretty easy to spot. They will use pictures off the internet of someone who is in the adult entertainment industry. A lot of the most obvious ones have contact info in the pictures. And they usually want to talk off the app pretty soon after you start talking.

But some of them will play the long con. I talked to one person for several days, it passed the initial sniff test, but then things they were saying didn't match up and even though they were supposedly American, they had the grammar of someone that English wasn't their native language.

Some of the things I look at when I'm talking to someone. If they give me their number, I will check out the area code, see if it matches up with their story. Like why do you have a South Dakota number if you've never been there? I'll also try to search the number to see what comes up. That doesn't always work, people often delist their number, but I've been able to catch a couple scammers because the number they used isn't delisted.

The best tool I use is reverse image searches. I primarily use Google Lens. You can take a picture that you took a screenshot of or saved to your phone and have the app search for exact matches or visually similar images. The lazy ones will often use pictures of people off the internet and it will usually pop up in a reverse image search.

One of the biggest red flags I see with scammers is that they will bring *** up very quickly. I used to work at a bank, the average person isn't comfortable talking about ***, even when they are at a bank. I've had people write down on a piece of paper how much they wanted to withdraw because they weren't comfortable saying it out loud and it was just me, them, and my branch manager at the time. And it wasn't a large quantity of *** they were asking for. Anyway, the point is, most people don't feel comfortable talking about ***, even at a bank. The only people I've met, especially on here, who are openly comfortable with talking about their financial situation, are people who are trying to scam you.

[SlightTech]

Devs really need to work on finding a way to weed out the profiles that have their contact info in their pictures. It really ruins the experience for me when I go to either scroll through nearby users or recently uploaded pictures and I come across 5 different profiles in just as many minutes with the same exact rule ***. I don't mind stopping to report them, but I can't imagine it being that difficult to implement something that checks a photo before someone is allowed to upload it that can check for that and reject it.

[cr****]

1 hour ago, SlightTech said:

Devs really need to work on finding a way to weed out the profiles that have their contact info in their pictures. It really ruins the experience for me when I go to either scroll through nearby users or recently uploaded pictures and I come across 5 different profiles in just as many minutes with the same exact rule ***. I don't mind stopping to report them, but I can't imagine it being that difficult to implement something that checks a photo before someone is allowed to upload it that can check for that and reject it.

The solution to it would be called OCR. It is brand new. Released in 1920 and adapted to modern computer problems. Can’t expect devs to use every modern solution. ;)

Sorry for being sarcastic but this is such a low hanging fruit. Even with vibe coding that would be the answer.

[SlightTech]

47 minutes ago, crane_ said:

The solution to it would be called OCR. It is brand new. Released in 1920 and adapted to modern computer problems. Can’t expect devs to use every modern solution. ;)

Sorry for being sarcastic but this is such a low hanging fruit. Even with vibe coding that would be the answer.

I don't know much about coding. I learned a little C plus plus in high school, but I can't imagine it being that difficult to implement.

I just feel like I wasted *** on a membership when other similar websites have less of a problem with this sort of thing.

Maybe making account verification mandatory instead of optional would help some of this out?

[ey****]

8 hours ago, SlightTech said:

Maybe making account verification mandatory instead of optional would help some of this out?

I'll circle back to some other points shortly - but mandatory verification doesn't work

Fluttr for example was a dating site which prided itself on mandatory verification so you knew everyone was real etc.   It went bankrupt.  As well as the huge costs of managing verification a lot of people are understandably apprehensive of handing over their IDs etc to sites

The other problem they ran into is that if someone manages to pass the checks, it still doesn't mean they are who they say they are and it creates it's own false security

However, most sites with optional verification - including this one -  do let you filter out all those who haven't verified. There becomes no reason to be contacted by, or see a profile of, someone who isn't verified. 

[ey****]

On images, particularly those with contact info on photos or anything else which shouldn't be there.

It is frankly shameful how poor the system (still) is.   I don't entirely know the current process to be fair, but I imagine it isn't that much different to how it was 3-4 years ago

Each image goes through two checks.  One via person. One via AI.  I'm not sure which one happens first.   The person who reviews the images is just another user.  Under Community > Activate Photos

it's only available to Premium/VIP members but any photo you approve gets points which of course can be spent extending the Premium/VIP - the issue of course is humans are flawed, perhaps clicking fast to categorise in under to rack up points quickly and no easy undo if a mistake is made.

It feels unfair to blame what is effectively volunteers for the mistake - but here we are, 8 years or so on - a user on a voluntary basis and an AI.   There was one point the AI approval was shockingly bad, which is how I know the process cos there was a LOT of complaints at the time with a tag line that "the model is being trained and reporting/complaining helps train the model" which is a terrible way to run things

it's also of course similar why so many fakes get through.   like a lot of thing, it's another area where the site needs more paid staff taking an active role rather than over-relying on volunteers