According to a report from iovation, the largest portion of online dating scams, 18%, occur in the US. The findings show that 1.3% of all transactions on online dating sites were fraudulent, slightly down from the 1.5% flagged by iovation in 2015.
By comparison, the rate of fraud across all industries, with the exception of gaming and retail, was lower than in online dating, at just 1.1% fraudulent activity for the year.
Increasingly, Americans are looking for and finding love through online dating services and mobile dating apps. A Pew Research Center survey reported that 15% of American adults have used online dating sites and/or mobile dating apps in their lifetimes. But online dating is on the rise. For young Americans, the percentage using online dating sites and/or mobile dating apps was 27%, up from just 10% in 2013.
According to iovation, the fast-growing online dating and mobile apps market has encouraged scammers to target would-be daters to spam with ads for real or imaginary products or to mine as sources of personal information for identity or credit card theft.
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