You say all scams are about money. Are some about identity theft?

by Mark
(Ohio)

I met a Russian woman on match.com. She asked me to write to her email address. In her first or second email she told me her birthday and asked for mine. To me that's a red flag.


Bob's Comment:

The "I met a Russian woman on match.com" is more of a scam indicator to me than the fact that she asked for your birthday. I don't know if it is still true, but I've heard that Match used to block certain regions from access to their system based on IP address, and Russia, Ukraine, etc. were on that block list. If that's still true, that means that a "Russian" "woman" (both in quotes for a reason... probably not Russian, maybe not even a woman) placed the profile from within a region that isn't blocked and just lied about "her" location.

But even if that's not still true, "Russian" and "Match.com" together in the same sentence almost always wreaks of scam.

As far as the identity theft thing goes, I know some people - even some Russians/Ukrainians - are concerned about giving out their birth dates for fear of identity theft, but to me that's just not that big a risk. Pretty much every entity with whom you do business knows your birthday and sends you an automated birthday card every year... How secret can it really be?

But, to each his own...

I will tell you that it isn't that unusual that a Russian/Ukrainian woman will ask for your birthday in correspondence. Usually it wouldn't be in the first message, but the idea is that if you're going to continue communication you will probably send each other birthday greetings.