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Building a world where LGBTQ+ people can find safe spaces to be themselves is at the heart of everything Hornet does. The fundamental part of our mission is to keep our digital home free from scammers, fake accounts, and spam. Hornet has always had a number of defenses to prevent spam attacks, and we’re regularly strengthening them. We can’t give you the exact details because we don’t want scammers to know what we’re doing. However, we can advise you that we have brought some verification procedures that will help us with that.

Scammers have been around for decades: from letters to email messages to apps. Over the years Hornet has built many defensive measures to keep our community safe from fraudsters and fakes including the use of AI and manual account checks. But online scamming is a profitable business and a way to live for some people so they will always keep inventing new tools to get around our defensive measures. While we do a tremendous amount of work every day to keep them off the app by blocking thousands of scam profiles, some still get through.

You may ask, why do I need to read this? The answer is very simple – it’s easier to protect yourself from something you know well. In the guide below we compiled a list of the most common types of spam/scam accounts you may encounter online. This is certainly not an exhaustive list of how they behave online (remember, they can be very resourceful), but it will give you a general idea of ​​what a typical malicious account looks like.

General Spam

Let’s first talk about what is a spam attack and what are the typical messages they send. Spam attacks are defined as an organized and unauthorized use of an app to send thousands of messages to its users. These messages are sent by fake or hacked profiles and often include unreal advertisements and links to which real users are asked to click on. Such attacks can have a large and negative impact on the user’s enjoyment of the app. If you ever receive an advertisement from other users promoting websites or stating that you won a prize, do NOT click the links. These attacks feed on the number of clicks these links have. The more clicks, the more they send spam messages, if there are no clicks, the spam attack would be pointless and would stop.

This is how the typical message will look like:

• will you look at my d**k as I jerk off? – (link to the website)
• (link to the website) – link to my creampie
• hi, can meet today, check my ***** profile (link to the website)
• If you like me, find me on (link to the website) My nickname is ****** Register and just use the search bar and put my nick into.
• community for finding sex in your city, enter this link in your browser – (link to the website)
• find yourself a guy and have an evening of sex with him – (link to the website)

Now you know what the typical spam message looks like. Usually, there is no actual person behind the profile, it is a robot who does all the actions based on an algorithm. Scam profiles are completely different from that, there is always an actual person behind the profile and they can easily adapt to the direction in which your conversation with them develops. This is why they are the most dangerous ones, as they can find your weak spot and use it to their advantage. Let’s review the most common types of scammers.

Romance Scam

They are very difficult to resist. There is always a real person behind the profile, they know psychology pretty well which makes it easy for them to find your weak points and they know perfectly well how to make you believe their story. Here we give you some tips that can help you identify if you are about to fall for a romance scam:

• Usually, the profile contacting you will be from overseas. Think twice why would someone being 6000 miles away contact you?
• Pay attention to photos – the photos used by scammers are usually of poor quality and staged, ordinary people do not usually take such photos. Never neglect to spend time googling these photos. Most likely you will find these publicly available on the Internet.
• Commonly, they would state that they come from a rich country (e.g. USA, Canada, Australia, UK, etc.) but are military personnel on a peacekeeping mission in another country, are volunteer doctors helping in poor countries, are civil engineers or mining workers working on projects abroad, working for an NGO company, etc. Their goal is to at least get you interested in their profession and the fact that they help the world and work abroad, thus they try to draw you into further conversation. If you were told this story in one of the first messages, be wary and continue communication at your own risk.
• Pay attention to the way your conversation develops. Almost from the very beginning, you will be sold the idea that they are honest and trustworthy, you will be convinced that age and distance do not matter to them, and you will be told that they are looking for true love. You may be told heartbreaking stories about how they were hurt and broken up with in the past and how they now have a hard time trusting people. The only purpose of this is to gain your trust and compassion, to make it so that you feel uncomfortable asking additional, and unnecessary, questions since this will make it more difficult for them to mislead you because it is easy to get entangled in your own lies.
• Eventually, after setting up e-relationships they will ask you for money. If by that stage you still haven’t realized that you’re talking to a scammer, it’s a perfect time to stop further communication. You will be given a chilling story about how they urgently need money. They will tell you about problems with making payments in the company they work for, that they are stuck in a foreign country, and so on. For sure, you will be asked to deposit money into an account, send it via a fast payment system, or simply buy a gift card that they can cash out. If you have reached this stage – do not transfer money or buy anything under any circumstances, and do not try to explain why you do not want or cannot transfer money to them, stop the communication and immediately report the profile to us so that we can take appropriate measures.
• Social media and dating apps are becoming very effective at identifying and blocking these types of profiles, and scammers know this, so they will try to move your conversation outside of the app, to one of the messaging apps, as fast as possible. Never give out your contact information and never move the conversation off the Hornet app.

This is what a typical message will look like:

• Hello, I’m [Name] from USA here looking for a serious relationship with a good partner, if you are interested in me, text me now on [Messenger] for better conversation… [Phone Number]
• I’m from USA Florida but now in Syria in peace keeping mission, I’m an active soldier, I have less than two months to get back home and I believe my location doesn’t bother you?
• Looking for a serious relationship? Text me on [Messenger] for better conversation. [Phone Number]
• Hello handsome how are you doing today my dear? I am [Name] cook from England and you?
• Am here for serious relationship and looking for soulmate
• A warm hey does not come from the lips only but also from the heart that love…. Hello and how are you doing Teddy Bear?…. I Am doing great..I am [Name], seeking for life partner, a computer technician and an E_6 sergeant in the army. What about you?

Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby Scam

Similar to romance scammers, there is an actual person behind the profile but these types of scammers are more straight to the point. In the very first message, you’ll be asked to become their sugar baby/sugar daddy. They don’t need to build a relationship with you, they try to immediately interest you with money and/or sexual content. But the goal remains the same – to get money from you as quickly as possible. Their typical behavior can be described as:

Sugar Baby – In the very first message they will offer you to establish a daddy-boy type of relationship. This type of scammer will offer to send you sexually explicit photos and videos of themselves in exchange for financial help from you.

• In most cases, a typical scammer will pretend to be a young, skinny boy, the kind we call Twink. We recommend you be extremely careful if you are being contacted by the type of men who usually don’t get in touch with you. This is one of the main signs that you are talking to a scammer.
• The main target audience of such scammers is older men already established in life and have no financial problems. After all, their main goal is to get money from you. The way scammers think comes down to a simple rule – the older the victim, the more likely they are to have free money that they are willing to spend.
• They are sexually explicit in their conversation with you. Usually, at the very beginning, they will tease you by showing what you can get in exchange for money. And believe us, it will be very difficult to resist such photos, they will be really good. Scammers know their business and know how to choose the right photos.
• Be careful, never share your personal and financial information that can help identify you. Try not to share your sexual photos. The reason is very simple – later the scammers can say that they are underage and start blackmailing you, demanding money. They will say that they will reveal your sex life to relatives, contact law enforcement agencies, and so on. They will demand money, but under no circumstances give it to them, the best thing to do is to contact law enforcement agencies first. We describe this case in more detail below, in the Extortion and Blackmailing scam section.

This is what a typical message will look like:

• Hi! I’m [Name] from Chicago USA, I’m a Gay sugar daddy looking for a gay sugar baby, text me on [Messenger] if interested. [Messenger] account: @n******1
• Hey there! 👋 I’m [Name Surname] 35years. Do you mind being a gay sugar baby? Coz I’m looking for one. If so, [messenger] is a better place to link up. [Messenger] account: @L******1
• What do you seek for here..? – Love💘 – Care😍 – Money🌹 – Relationship💋 – Sugar Daddy💯

Sugar Daddy – opposite to sugar babies, this type of scammer will claim that they want to spoil you with lots of money in exchange for hot content. Typically they will tell you how much they would give for a certain type of content you may send to them. The main audience – a younger generation who potentially have money issues.

• Typically, this will be an older man contacting you with such an offer. The photographs will clearly show that they have a rich lifestyle, including big houses, expensive cars, and traveling to different countries, anything that proves their financial status. But in most cases, these will be photos taken from the Internet or stolen from Instagram. Spend a little time searching for these photos on the Internet.
• They will try to move your conversation to another messenger, asking for your social media accounts, etc. We do not recommend giving out your contact information and moving the conversation off the Hornet’s app.
• In most cases, they will try to connect with you through applications or services for making quick money transfers. These will be services where you can link your bank card from which transfers will be made. Scammers try to avoid using official banking applications, since this will not allow them to use stolen cards, will reveal their identity and most likely the bank will simply block any suspicious money transfer. Never fall into this and do not reveal any of your financial information.
• Firstly, their goal is to make you believe that you will soon receive a huge amount of money from them (remember, they know psychology and know how to find weak points). Then, the conversation with this type of scammer can develop according to one of the following scenarios:
  • They may ask you to transfer them a small amount of money first. They will give you different reasons for this: that they want to check that you have a valid bank account; they may say that they sent you a money transfer, but it came back and in order to check the correctness of your bank details and establish a connection with your account, they need to receive a transfer of a small amount of money from you; sometimes they will tell you a tearful story about how the previous boy cheated and dumped them right after they transferred their money, so to prove your seriousness, you must make them a small transfer. Never transfer money to people you don’t know, whatever the circumstances are.
  • You may start receiving small amounts of money from a scammer, and then they “accidentally” transfer a large amount of money to you. Then they will write to you that they did it by mistake and ask you to return some of the money to them. What is really happening is that they use a stolen credit card to transfer money to you, and when this “mistaken transfer” of a large amount of money happens, they replace the stolen credit card with their own and now you transfer money to the scammer. This is one of the ways how they get money from stolen credit cards transferred to their own bank account. In this case, you can unknowingly become an accomplice to the crime.
  • Recently, this type of scammer started resorting to blackmailing users. Their main goal is to get your personal data, which will help them identify you, and find your friends and family. You can also be convinced to send them explicit photos of you. Now they have everything they need to blackmail you. This type of scam usually flourishes in countries where being openly gay is life-threatening. Scammers will certainly use your fear that your personal life may be exposed. In the end, you will be asked to transfer money to them so that they remain silent. Be reluctant to share your personal details or explicit photos with people you don’t know well enough. You can read more about this below, in the Extortion and Blackmailing scam section.

This is what a typical message will look like:

• Hey babe I’m ready to be your sugar daddy and I will pay you your allowance weekly if you are interested text me on [Messenger, Phone Number, or Line ID]
• Hi! I’m [Name] from Chicago USA, I’m a Gay sugar daddy looking for a gay sugar baby, text me on [Messenger, Phone Number or Line ID]
• Hey, I’m looking for an honest and cool sugar baby, text me on [Messenger, Phone Number, or Line ID] for better conversation

Extortion and Blackmailing Scam

This way of scamming people is on the rise across all social media platforms especially on dating apps. Scammers will try to get as much information about who you are, your personal life, etc. as possible and then use it to extort money from you. We will try to help you understand what this type of scammer is and how not to fall for their tricks.

• The first thing you should pay attention to is that almost from the very beginning of your conversation you will be tempted to switch to other messengers or social networks to continue communication. Typically, this will be WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, Skype, etc. Why do they do this? – The answer is very simple – this will allow them to find out some of your personal information (your phone number, your real photos, the nickname you use, your email address, where you live or where you work, who your friends are). We do not recommend giving out your contact information and moving the conversation off the Hornet’s app.
• Typically, the victims of these scammers are people who prefer to have a secretive lifestyle, often married. Because they don’t want their sex life to be public knowledge and they are easier to blackmail and extort money.
• The scammer’s goal is to get as much of your personal information as possible so that they can easily identify you. Be careful sharing any information that could help them identify where you live, where you work, and your social circle. Remember, they might give you their motives for obtaining personal information and access to your social networks, and it may sound quite innocent. But if at the first stages of your conversation with a stranger you understand that you are being asked for more information about yourself than usual, be wary and continue the correspondence with caution, or it is even better to stop it.
• Be careful when exchanging sexually explicit photos, especially if you do it outside of Hornet, from your social media accounts or using messengers registered to your phone. Before sharing sexually explicit photos, it is worth establishing a strong connection with the person, making sure that they are a real person, and that the photos they send you are not taken from the Internet. If you are very tempted to share explicit photos of yourself, make sure that there is nothing on it that can help to identify you.
• Typically, the conversation develops in one of these directions:
  • If the victim is a person who prefers discreet encounters and does not want anyone to know about them using a gay dating app. Typically, scammers will be looking for married guys, bi-guys, curious ones, and those who have to live a discreet life because being gay in their area is life-threatening. In this case, scammers will be first of all looking for any information that can help them reveal your identity, they don’t even need to get any compromising photos from you. If the information on their hands is enough to prove your use of gay dating apps this is when their mission is completed. They will start threatening to reveal your identity to your relatives, your friends, and coworkers and make your sexual life public if you don’t pay them money
  • In the next case, it doesn’t really matter to a scammer who will be their victim – old or young, discreet or openly gay, etc. Their goal is to get sexual videos and photos from you or sometimes screenshots of sex chats will be enough for them to start threatening you. They will try to drag you into a sex video call which they can secretly record. The video you will see during this call will be a fake pre-recorded video taken from the internet. Once they have the sexual content they need, they will blackmail you, saying that they will send these photos, videos, and chats to all your friends, and publish them on the Internet, if you do not send them a certain amount of money.
  • The next one is one of the most insidious. You will be contacted by a young-looking boy of incredible beauty, and almost from the very beginning he will engage in overly sexual conversation with you, share explicit content, and ask you for the same in return. Remember, their goal is to elicit a response from you. Once you start exchanging sexual messages with them or sharing explicit photos, you’ve fallen for their bait. Very soon, you will be told that the person you had a sexual conversation with is underage. They may even act out a short scene where you get contacted by their “parents” who are willing to turn a blind eye to your behavior if you give them money, otherwise, they’ll go to the police. The victim will be very scared and will easily part with the money. But you shouldn’t do this, take a breath, and assess the situation, maybe you are communicating with scammers and you should contact law enforcement agencies instead. Believe us, you are not alone in this, this type of fraud is very common on the Internet. We can assure you that Hornet takes any possible underage cases very seriously and normally removes them from the app very quickly. If you think someone is underage, please take a minute to report the potential underage user to us.

This is how the typical message will look like:

• I was just about to delete Hornet from my phone, you sent me a message. Write me on [Messenger] [phone number]
• Hello dear, they are bothering me a lot from here and I haven’t gotten used to it either. I will give you my number, let’s continue on [Messenger], if our minds match we can meet.
• Good night, welcome to my circle of friendship ❤️ You have [messenger] for us to be friends there too my angel? ❤️

Investment Scam

This type of scam has been around for quite some time already. Their goal is to interest you in getting a quick and large increase in capital with usually small investments. Convincing you of a multiple increase in your capital in a short period of time. But the truth is that there are no investment instruments that will allow you to increase your capital by 10 times in a short period of time, even if they exist, no one will actively offer them to you, especially a stranger. Be cautious if:

• You get contacted by a bank worker, financial services company representative, investor, crypto guru, etc. Remember, it will always be you looking to increase your own capital, and this is absolutely out of someone else’s interest to increase your capital. Thus, you will be the one looking for a safe place for your savings, and not a stranger who contacts you on a dating platform. We recommend ending such conversations immediately, no matter how trustworthy the person seems to you.
• The offer will sound very sweet and tempting, you can already see yourself driving a Porsche, living in a huge house, flying first class. STOP – there are no miracles in the world, even a few years is often not enough to double your capital. If someone promises you that you will get 2-5-10 times more in a short period of time – this is not true.
• Reject any requests to switch to another messenger to continue the conversation, no matter how attractive the offer may seem. As has been said many times in this article – switch to other apps for communication only if there is really a need for this, if you 100% trust the person and they don’t potentially need anything from you.
• Never click on any links sent to you by a stranger, as this could allow them to gain access to your device and steal your personal data. You may be asked to follow a link only so that you can familiarize yourself with the company and the investment instruments offered. You may also be offered to visit a website in order to make investments (buy stock, cryptocurrency, etc.), because if there is a website it cannot be a scam, at least many people think so. The truth is that it can, these websites can look very credible, offer to register an account, go through a verification process and there may even be online support that works! But once you follow all the steps and make the “investment”, boom – the scammers have everything – your personal data, your card or bank account details, and your money.
• This is a rather unusual type of fraud and we described it a little in the sugar daddy section – when scammers transfer money to you and then ask you to transfer the entire amount or part of it to another account. Why they do this: A. They establish a relationship of trust with you, how can you not trust them if they sent you the money? This makes you more relaxed and more likely to give them your own money. B. For sure, the money was transferred to you from a stolen credit card, so they transfer it to themselves, and law enforcement is more likely to have questions for you, and not for a person who no one knows and who is now impossible to find.

This is what a typical message will look like:

• I’m here looking for friends or a long term relationship, are you too?
• I seldom use this software. You can add my [messenger] so that we can get to know each other better. This is my number [************]
• Sorry, I seldom use this. We can add [messenger].
• Nice to meet you. Where are you from? What is your job?
• I’m financial manager, how about you?
• I’m quality control manager at Ubisoft Game company how about you ? Are you at work?
• I am here in Limerick just visiting. I originally from UK. I work as Risk analyst. What do you do for a living?
• I travel a lot of country for my work, but our company is based in Australia

Scammers Sending External Links or Asking for Verification Codes

• The most common type of fraud is sending spam messages with links to third-party resources. It is a well-known fact that you should never open links received from unknown people, applications, organizations, etc. In most cases, by clicking on the link you will simply see stupid annoying advertising, but some of them would request you to register first, and this is how bad actors gain access to your personal data.
• A type of fraud that has become increasingly popular recently – asking for verification codes. You may be given completely innocent reasons why you should tell the person this code. But if someone asks you to tell them the code or you received a verification code (request to change the password, etc.) that you did not request – this is 100% a scam. Never give these codes to anyone, including your friends, relatives, etc. Always remember – scammers can pretend to be people you know, government officials, law enforcement representatives, bank or financial employees, etc. Remember – the verification code is usually used as part of the two-step verification for access to many applications, accounts, government, and bank services, it is also commonly used as part of the verification when registering a new account.It is quite possible that some of your personal data (such as email, phone, etc.) may already be known to scammers as they were leaked to the Internet earlier during one of the major cyber-attacks. Therefore, by providing someone with your verification code, you may be giving them access to, for example, your banking application, or government account, or allowing them to register a fraudulent account in your name.
• We haven’t encountered this type of scam on Hornet yet, but have seen other platforms report them – request to register on a security website or app. A scammer would tell you a story about how they were attacked, beaten, robbed, etc. on one of their dates and they are not ready to meet you unless you register on one of the resources “guaranteeing a safe date”. As a rule, this third-party website or app will ask for your personal information – photo, name, email, address, or even for a little deposit “guaranteeing your good behavior on the date”. In fact, there are no online resources that can guarantee anyone a safe date. The main rule remains the same – never give out your personal data to strangers, unverified organizations, suspicious websites or apps, etc.

Scammers Pretending to be Hornet Officials

Some brazen scammers may even pretend to be Hornet employees. Typically they would try to get your personal information from you, justifying this by the need to verify your account. Remember, Hornet Staff will never ask you for your personal or financial information. If this is a real, legitimate Hornet representative asking you for this information, we always tell you to contact us at feedback@hornet.com to provide needed information and we would never ask you to send any private information in messages. If you have grounds to suspect that this is not an official Hornet account or representative, please contact us at feedback@hornet.com and our support team will advise you.

Some scammers might contact you with promises of cash prizes from Hornet, telling you that you were the lucky one to win the lottery. If Hornet was running a promo or a lottery, then this event would get due broad coverage in the app, so you would definitely not miss the event. If you haven’t seen any prior announcements about upcoming promos or lotteries, and someone is telling you that you won 300K bucks in a lottery – this is absolutely a scammer. Instead of replying to them, get in touch with us at feedback@hornet.com.

We have tried to collect the most common types of scammers in this article, but this is far from a complete list. Always be on guard and remember, people can be very inventive in their attempts to steal your money, personal and financial information, gain access to your accounts, and then blackmail you.

If you cannot find a solution in our FAQ, please write to us at feedback@hornet.com. It is important that you include your Account ID so that we can trace your account. Your Account ID is located on your profile, on the top center of the screen, and begins with the “@” symbol.