Best dating sites

 It’s only been a few days since Valentine’s day. Many of you might have come across these ads. These are ads from popular dating apps. Apart from these apps, you would’ve come across ads like these in your browser. Raju Ansari saw an ad from a dating app called L’amour. Last year, L’amour had a 4.2+ rating in the Google store. It had over 10 million downloads and ranked 6th in the list of top-grossing apps. The ads enticed Raju and he downloaded the app. Once he started using this app, he came across pictures of several women. Many even started messaging him. He was delighted to receive messages from women. But there was one hurdle, he couldn’t reply to the messages. To reply to the messages, he needed to pay Rs. 199. And he did so too. But now instead of messages, he started receiving calls. This created another hurdle. He couldn’t answer the calls until he paid more. “Aisha is very interested, and she wants to talk to you.” “Ipshita is inviting you to a video call.” He started receiving such messages. As you can guess, this app is a scam. And Raju isn’t the only one who got duped. There are many reviews on Google Store that suggest that the app is fake. Ansari states later that the app is ‘crap’. Don’t think L’amour is a random app. L’amour was the most downloaded dating app in the year 2019 in India. It even earned $1 million by 2020. There are several apps like L’amour that earn money in the same manner. So in this video, we’ll try to understand the process of the scam and different types of dating app scams taking place in India. Most fake dating apps use the same model. They post tons of ads on social media, especially on Facebook. L’amour had over 1000 active ads on its Facebook page in Feb 2020. It’s obvious that these ads target Indian men. The ad strategies of these fake apps are very different from that of typical dating apps. Typical dating apps like Tinder and Bumble  don’t target men through their ads. On the contrary, they target women. As men find their way to the apps anyway. And the success of the dating app is determined by the balance between male and female users. The apps we would be discussing today aren’t typical dating apps. They use an entirely different ad strategy. Most of these dating apps are run by Chinese companies. And they use an ad strategy that has been successful in their country. After displaying the ad, the next part starts after someone downloads the app. After downloading the app one is bombarded with messages. These messages aren’t sent by girls, but by a bot or computer program. And this bot can only answer standard questions in either yes or no. “Do you watch porn?”  “It’s so silly guys?” “I don’t think this is from a girl.” After some time, the message sent by this bot becomes irrelevant. So when a user becomes a premium member of the app,  the bot is replaced by a human. When you use this app, every second of your communication is charged. You’ll have to pay to reply to text messages. You’ll have to pay for a voice call. And you’ll need to pay if you want to make a video call. “It says, ‘you’re so boring”. “They’re tempting me to pay in any possible way.” A normal user would believe that a woman, who’s been messaging and calling him, is actually interested. Sadly, that's not true. All the girls are hired by the app to converse with users. Sonacon Entertainment, a talent agency, hired around 2000 women to work for 15 Chinese apps. The women don’t seek romance. They just want to earn money through these apps. And how do these women earn money? It depends on how long men use the app.  And how much they spend on it. This is the clear instruction for the women. Check this recruitment ad posted on Facebook. It states that a woman needs to make a 4-sec call, say hello, and then hang up. Through this ad, the agency is seeking to recruit a “host” for an app. “Host” here refers to women who will talk to men. Sonacon entertainment isn’t the only agency. There’re several other agencies that employ women to such fake apps. The experienced women recruit others and train them for this. These trainers instruct others that, “you can use fake names and photos. And better the quality of display picture the higher are the chances of you receiving calls.” “Many will just text you but you need to goad them into calling you so that you can earn more points.” “You’ll have to drag each conversation.” Like we discussed before L’amour isn’t the only such fake app. In January 2020, 14 of 20 top-grossing apps on the Google Play Store offered dating and chatting services. Many of these apps are placed under the category ‘Social’, ‘Entertainment’, and ‘Communication’. But each sells the point of love, dating, and sex at one point or another. One such app is Hago. The app advertises itself with a pretense of “play-games-and-makes-friends”. But once you use the app you start receiving notifications from women. And these apps maintain their popularity on Google Play Store by buying fake reviews During an investigation, journalists found a company that charged Rs. 15 per fake review. Unfortunately, this is only one kind of dating scam. There are other types too. Another such dating scams target homosexuals. TOI conducted an investigation for this. It found a user named, Tejas Mehta,  a homosexual who used a gay dating app to find a partner. He found a match on the app.  But when he met the user in person, he found that his match had no resemblance with his profile picture. The person that grabbed his collar and forced him to withdraw Rs. 20,000 from an ATM. This practice is called: A scammer creates a fake profile and targets homosexuals who’re rich and lonely. They ask for various personal details from their targets such as their home and office addresses. And then they coerce them to extort money.  That's why homosexuals don’t lodge complaints if they’re conned. This in turn makes them easy for such scams. The second type of scam is where the scammers target divorces and widows. For example, Harita, a 44-year-old divorcee met a doctor on a matrimonial portal. Usually, scammers assume the identity of doctors and army personnel as these professions inspire trust in our society. The doctor then told Harita that he is traveling to India to propose to her. Then Harita received a call from the customs department  which claimed that the doctor had been arrested for laundering money. And to secure his release she needs to pay Rs 5 Lakhs. Harita paid 5 Lakhs. But later realized that it had been a scam. Some incidents of dating apps might be funny,  but they have sad and serious reasons behind them. “How many friend requests have you sent to girls on Facebook?”  “Hardly 1 out of 100 would’ve ever replied to you.” The first reason is the rise in depression and anxiety, especially during the economic crisis. Depression is rising among Indian men due to unemployment and economic pressure. According to WHO, India is one of the most depressed countries in the world. This makes it easier for scammers to target men. Along with depression, isolation is rising among Indian men. The major reason behind this is migration. According to the economic survey of 2016, the inter-state migration of workers has increased significantly in the last 5 years. When men leave their villages and seek jobs in the cities, they lose their family-structure too. And it’s common to feel isolated in such situations. Researches suggest that social connections are important for our well-being. Many men use these apps to build social connections. The third reason is the rigid social structure for marriages in our society. The divorce rate in India is the lowest in the world. You can reason that it’s because people are satisfied with their marriage. Another reason could be: The unsatisfied partners persevere to stay in the marriage due to the rigid structure of our society. Separation isn’t an option for many couples in our country. And that’s why they seek extra-marital affairs. In a survey, 72% of the participants claimed that they would cheat on their partners without any regrets. Depression and isolation don’t just affect Indian men. Women are facing them too. But these apps target men because we all know that money in a family is controlled by men. Let’s discuss the solutions. How can you protect yourself from such scams? You can consider these four things: First, you could check for poor grammar and spelling mistakes  if someone is talking to you in English. Secondly, when you match with someone, you should verify their profile pictures on other social media platforms. You could check their profile on LinkedIn, and see if it’s consistent with their Facebook and Instagram profiles. Thirdly, you shouldn’t transfer money at any cost to any of the users. Finally, there’re several original apps where you’ve to pay to unlock certain features. Make sure you give it a second thought. Is the app trying to scam you? or will you actually unlock the features? But these are short-term solutions.  Even today, premarital relationships such as dating is considered as taboo by many in our country. And you can clearly understand from the examples  that many men get excited when they receive messages from women on the apps. It’s because they don’t get much exposure during their youth  where they could talk to a girl and be in a relationship with her. Until we bring these reforms, we can’t eradicate this problem.