Straight to the heart of the matter: towards effective means of combatting romance fraud

Marc Kydd; Lynsay A. Shepherd; Andrea Szymkowiak; Graham I. Johnson

Straight to the heart of the matter: towards effective means of combatting romance fraud

Marc Kydd^*
, Lynsay A. Shepherd
, Andrea Szymkowiak
, Graham I. Johnson

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Cybersecurity and Computing

Research output: Contribution to conference › Poster › peer-review

227 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Romance fraud has rapidly increased over the past decade and has become one of the most devastating forms of fraud around. By impersonating a victim's 'true love’, scammers can exploit victims’ trust and money, leaving victims emotionally and financially ruined.

This devious and exploitative cybercrime merits a strong response to prevent the risk of, and damage resulting from, romance fraud. Consequently, many approaches have been taken to deter and disrupt the effectiveness of scammers, ranging from easily distributable awareness campaigns to bespoke victim support groups.

Such approaches demonstrate promising results in some areas; however, they are not without their limitations. Awareness campaigns can only be effective if users retain the message. Meanwhile, victim support groups can only attempt to lessen the emotional impact for victims and prevent them from being further defrauded. Existing approaches overlook a key area in the romance fraud timeline: the dating platforms themselves. Dating platforms offer an opportunity to examine interactions between scammers and potential victims, thus potentially providing interventions when scammer behaviour is identified rather than after the fact; allowing context dependent advice in this setting helps keep users one step ahead of the scammers.

Original language	English
Number of pages	1
Publication status	Published - 13 Jul 2023
Event	Third International Conference on Behavioural and Social Sciences in Security - University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom Duration: 11 Jul 2023 → 13 Jul 2023 Conference number: 3rd https://crestresearch.ac.uk/bass23/

Conference

Conference	Third International Conference on Behavioural and Social Sciences in Security
Abbreviated title	BASS23
Country/Territory	United Kingdom
City	Bath
Period	11/07/23 → 13/07/23
Other	The conference themes are Risk Assessment and Management; Gathering Human Intelligence; and Deterrence and Disruption. Across all the themes we are interested in whether there are novel or established approaches from underrepresented but cognate fields such as, e.g., sociology, digital health, political science, design, mathematics, or linguistics that can provide new ways forward with any of these questions?
Internet address	https://crestresearch.ac.uk/bass23/

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Keywords

Romance fraud
Romance scam
Human-computer interaction
Cybercrime
Cybersecurity

Access to Document

Shepherd_StraightToTheHeartOfTheMatter_Presented_2023Final published version, 2 MB

Love bytes: improving romance fraud prevention
Kydd, M., Shepherd, L., Johnson, G. & Szymkowiak, A., 18 Mar 2024, CREST Security Review, Winter 2024, 18, p. 28-29 2 p.
Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article

Open Access
File

Cite this

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title = "Straight to the heart of the matter: towards effective means of combatting romance fraud",

abstract = "Romance fraud has rapidly increased over the past decade and has become one of the most devastating forms of fraud around. By impersonating a victim's 'true love{\textquoteright}, scammers can exploit victims{\textquoteright} trust and money, leaving victims emotionally and financially ruined. This devious and exploitative cybercrime merits a strong response to prevent the risk of, and damage resulting from, romance fraud. Consequently, many approaches have been taken to deter and disrupt the effectiveness of scammers, ranging from easily distributable awareness campaigns to bespoke victim support groups. Such approaches demonstrate promising results in some areas; however, they are not without their limitations. Awareness campaigns can only be effective if users retain the message. Meanwhile, victim support groups can only attempt to lessen the emotional impact for victims and prevent them from being further defrauded. Existing approaches overlook a key area in the romance fraud timeline: the dating platforms themselves. Dating platforms offer an opportunity to examine interactions between scammers and potential victims, thus potentially providing interventions when scammer behaviour is identified rather than after the fact; allowing context dependent advice in this setting helps keep users one step ahead of the scammers.",

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year = "2023",

month = jul,

day = "13",

language = "English",

note = "Third International Conference on Behavioural and Social Sciences in Security, BASS23 ; Conference date: 11-07-2023 Through 13-07-2023",

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TY - CONF

T1 - Straight to the heart of the matter

T2 - Third International Conference on Behavioural and Social Sciences in Security

AU - Kydd, Marc

AU - Shepherd, Lynsay A.

AU - Szymkowiak, Andrea

AU - Johnson, Graham I.

N1 - Conference code: 3rd

PY - 2023/7/13

Y1 - 2023/7/13

N2 - Romance fraud has rapidly increased over the past decade and has become one of the most devastating forms of fraud around. By impersonating a victim's 'true love’, scammers can exploit victims’ trust and money, leaving victims emotionally and financially ruined. This devious and exploitative cybercrime merits a strong response to prevent the risk of, and damage resulting from, romance fraud. Consequently, many approaches have been taken to deter and disrupt the effectiveness of scammers, ranging from easily distributable awareness campaigns to bespoke victim support groups. Such approaches demonstrate promising results in some areas; however, they are not without their limitations. Awareness campaigns can only be effective if users retain the message. Meanwhile, victim support groups can only attempt to lessen the emotional impact for victims and prevent them from being further defrauded. Existing approaches overlook a key area in the romance fraud timeline: the dating platforms themselves. Dating platforms offer an opportunity to examine interactions between scammers and potential victims, thus potentially providing interventions when scammer behaviour is identified rather than after the fact; allowing context dependent advice in this setting helps keep users one step ahead of the scammers.

AB - Romance fraud has rapidly increased over the past decade and has become one of the most devastating forms of fraud around. By impersonating a victim's 'true love’, scammers can exploit victims’ trust and money, leaving victims emotionally and financially ruined. This devious and exploitative cybercrime merits a strong response to prevent the risk of, and damage resulting from, romance fraud. Consequently, many approaches have been taken to deter and disrupt the effectiveness of scammers, ranging from easily distributable awareness campaigns to bespoke victim support groups. Such approaches demonstrate promising results in some areas; however, they are not without their limitations. Awareness campaigns can only be effective if users retain the message. Meanwhile, victim support groups can only attempt to lessen the emotional impact for victims and prevent them from being further defrauded. Existing approaches overlook a key area in the romance fraud timeline: the dating platforms themselves. Dating platforms offer an opportunity to examine interactions between scammers and potential victims, thus potentially providing interventions when scammer behaviour is identified rather than after the fact; allowing context dependent advice in this setting helps keep users one step ahead of the scammers.

M3 - Poster

Y2 - 11 July 2023 through 13 July 2023

ER -

Straight to the heart of the matter: towards effective means of combatting romance fraud

Abstract

Conference

UN SDGs

Keywords

Access to Document

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Research output

Love bytes: improving romance fraud prevention

Cite this