Scammers and viewing profiles

by Gary
(Boston, MA)

Hey Bob:

I read previously how one of your suggestions for determining a scammer is to see if someone who communicates to you has viewed your profile.

I noticed several of my 'admirers' fell under that scenario both at Russian Cupid and Ukrainian Date. Some were average-looking so it didn't make sense that they would be scamming. They're not hot.

So I thought I'd email customer service about it. Below was their response. It seems it's possible to gander at photos and express interest. Thoughts on their response?

"Please be advised that most searches you perform on our site can display the result in different views, such as Photo View, Basic View, Detail View, and Profile View.

In all of these views, buttons for "Show Interest" and "Send Message" are available, however a member will only be added to your "Viewed My Profile" list if they view your profile in Profile View. This means that a member can show interest in you, or send you a message, without viewing your full profile."


Bob's Answer:

Remember that I do say that this test isn't 100% reliable, and there are several reasons for that.

I do know that a woman can send you a message or an expression of interest by just seeing your profile in some less than full mode. As I recall members can view search results just in thumbnail mode where they can see around 8 profiles per page. There's another mode where they can see a thumbnail plus some information. And in each case, yes, they can click the "Send Message" button right on those search results without going into the full profile and thereby not show up in the "Who Viewed Me" list of the person they're writing.

But when they contact you this way, they aren't first seeing what you write about yourself, your profession, your height/weight, whether you have kids, whether you smoke/drink, OR YOUR ADDITIONAL FULL SIZED PICTURES.

My reasoning is that a serious person would care about all that before writing. Wouldn't you? I know for me, before I write a girl I read EVERYTHING she says, and I CAREFULLY inspect EVERY photo MULTIPLE TIMES, and I just can't see how someone serious would contact me without viewing my full profile.

So whenever a girl wrote me on one of those sites and I didn't see her in the list of women who viewed my profile, I would write her back saying something like "Thanks for writing! I'd like to get to know you too... Perhaps the best way to initially introduce myself further would be to ask you to read my full profile where you can read much more about me and view a few recent pictures... Who knows, maybe all that will scare you away? :)"

Then if they still don't show up in the list of women who viewed my FULL profile, I quit.

But it is possible that others think differently than I do and just don't really place any weight on more details... age, location, and one thumbnail picture is enough for them to send a hello.

But there's another catch... it is possible on those sites (Russian Cupid, Ukraine Date) - at least when I was using them - to view a full profile without being logged in. So if women knew my trick, they could have viewed your full profile without showing up in your "who viewed me" list. But I doubt most of them know my trick :)