Although online dating has brought a lot of people together for love and hookups, the downsides are prevalent.

There are catfishes on online dating apps who are looking to take advantage of an innocent user.

When you are using an online dating app without knowing how to spot a catfish, you are vulnerable to them.

These are scammers who use the fake profile of an attractive person to entice you into falling for their scam.

These scams include getting you to provide sensitive personal data, spend money, visit an external website filled with destructive viruses, fall in love with a fake persona, etc.

To extract money out of you, they often use a sob story to make you feel pity for them that often involves a sick family member in need of emergency aid.

Other times, they attempt to convince you that you are about to come into a lot of money and all you have to do is pay a small fee to get access to it.

Sadly, a lot of people fall prey to these scams, especially elderly people.

Don’t be one of their victims.

Anyone who is attempting to extract sensitive personal information from you or money on an online dating app is a scammer.

Never fall for their tricks.

Instead, report the suspicious profile to the administrators of the dating app and block the profile.

Furthermore, there are catfishes who are intent on making you think they are someone they aren’t with the express purpose of stealing and wasting your time and attention.

As usual, they use a profile filled with the fake or stolen photos of an attractive person.

The idea is to grab your attention the moment you see these attractive photos.

Soon, you are swiping right on their profile, excited about the prospect of matching with them.

They match with you.

Before you know it, you are engrossed in a back-and-forth conversation with someone you think is real who actually isn’t.

All the captivating and relatable information in the person’s profile is false.

You are chatting with a catfish who is intent on stealing and wasting your time and attention.

To identify that this is a catfish, request to do a video chat or meet in person soon after matching and having a few message exchanges.

If this is a catfish, they will give you some kind of excuse not to do it.

This is your cue.

It’s time to report this person to the administrators on the online dating app and block them.

The next downside about online dating has to do with the illusion of endless dating options.

Sadly, lots of people get caught up in this illusion.

Given how many profiles they see on a daily basis, they think that these dating options are unlimited.

This means that when they go on a date with a great match, they often end up ghosting that person believing there to be someone better waiting for them in their match feed when they log back into the dating app.

This often leads to lots of the same people staying on a dating app for years haplessly in search of a match that is perfect in every which way.

This match doesn’t exist, as no one is perfect.

Yet, online dating apps tend to give people the impression that they have endless dating options, which often leads to a perennial state of singlehood.

Finally, there are people on online dating apps who have been inactive for years, and yet many of their profiles remain visible.

When you are yet to become a paying member of a dating app, and as you are browsing, you are likely going to come across several of these inactive profiles.

These people are attractive, and this could compel you to go ahead and become a paying member of the dating app, excited about the prospect of communicating with them.

Several weeks later you come to realize that none of these attractive people have matched with you or replied to your messages.

Unfortunately, some dating apps keep inactive profiles visible on their platforms so as to entice potential paying customers to sign up and buy a subscription with the intent to match with these profiles.

To determine that you are looking at inactive profiles as you browse and anticipate signing up on a dating app, look for an icon on the profile that displays the last time that person was online.

If there isn’t an option for this, you are better off not subscribing to that particular dating app.