The most difficult thing about online dating is weeding out the bad and all of the scammers that take part in online dating sites. By making yourself more educated about the reality of online dating scams you can increase your chances of actually meeting someone that you can spend the rest of your life with.

It all starts with the profile, and how to spot a fake one. Some scammers are smarter than others and actually put a lot of work into their fake dating profiles, so sometimes you won't be able to tell at all if it's a fake or not, but the lazy ones should be considered as fake immediatly.

First thing I look for is to see how many pictures of themselves they have in their dating profile. Most people that are on a dating site and are serious are going to post at least 3-5 pictures, should that person only have 1 photo on there makes it a little suspect in my opinion.

Second thing I look for when spotting a fake dating profile would be to read the description field. If you are in the United States and browsing profiles, you should make sure that whoever's profile you are viewing uses proper english and grammar. If you are on a Hispanic or French dating site, same rules apply, proper grammar.

There are many scammers from Nigeria and China that make hundreds of fake dating profiles a day, and they the time to make all of these profiles but don't take the time to ensure their biography part of the field is written properly.

Here are some tips on how to spot a fake dating profile using search engines as a tool. Pick a small section of the biography, about 10 words or so, and put the entry in Google using quotation marks. Such as "I'm fun, loving, like long walks on the beach and so much more!". Now when you search in Google with quotation marks it's going to show you every page in their index that includes that, and can help you determine whether or not the profiles fake or not.

If you see many results with the same description, different picture, same username, then there's a good chance that you just spotted a fake dating profile.

You can also do the same thing in a search with their username.... Just remember the fake dating profiles are out there for some reason or another, whether it's to make the website ratio more even, or to attempt to steal email addresses or other personal information. Just remember to be careful and cautious and use your gut feeling, and report any fake dating profiles to the webmaster for removal :)