Scammer is sick or has a sick parent or child, or is stuck in a country (Nigeria or Russia usually) and they need your help.Their money, credit card, and ID has been lost or stolen and they have been arrested and need to pay a lawyer so they will be allowed to leave the country.The scammer cannot afford it, but offers to drive to meet you (or take a plane or bus), and requests money to help pay for this.After you send the money, you never hear from them again - or you receive ongoing excuses to delay the trip and more requests for money.A few years ago, image recognition on a large scale was restricted to law enforcement and corporate security. Free services like Tineye and Google Images will search billions of indexed images on the internet for identical or similar pictures.

For more information, click on the video below to the U. Federal Trade Commission's advice to avoid online romance scams, also available here:

Aliases and usernames have become a big part of our personal online presence, and we often feel tied to them when we register for new sites and services.

This can be a great was to build an online identity, but it can also make it trivial to tie our activity on various services together.

The very simplest, a Google search will often turn up social media profiles, forum posts, and blog comments tied to a particular username.

If you’re concerned about dating site matches finding your online presence, or people online finding your dating profile, just don’t reuse usernames or email addresses!