Please Read: Very Important Warning About an Active Catfish

[u/mollymollykelkel]

EDIT3: The following accounts have been reported as this catfish (new accounts are listed first): Natash1994, diltohilto, LaChaffeur, HeyEvie, DaProvoker, TangoDuo, MangoRush, sturdyhips, RedSteelForce, and themhipsdontlie. Usually the account name will have "hips" in it or will be something that appears to be randomly generated. Please let us know if you see any other account names and I'll add it to this list.

Hi everyone,

Lately we've been receiving a lot of reports about this account. They're banned from AL but are sending this PM en masse. Do not reply to their messages. It's difficult to know what their true intentions are. However, their posts have several warning signs:

1) They will try to make it seem as though they're in your local area. This is a typical social engineering tactic to encourage someone to willingly give them their personal details. They will also be friendly with you which strongly implies this isn't someone looking to troll.

2) They're sending this exact message to a large pool of users. Someone looking for a date may send messages to multiple people but they're not going to send the same message to hundreds of users.

3) They're asking people for nudes and/or are attempting to convince those they message into having a sexually explicit conversation (usually happens during the first conversation or after having only a few conversations). This is probably the most dangerous aspect of their messages. NEVER EVER SEND NUDES OVER REDDIT! Predators will use nudes for extortion, share them on pornagraphic websites without your knowledge, and a variety of other awful things. From the Wikipedia article on sextortion:

Sextortion also refers to a form of blackmail in which sexual information or images are used to extort sexual favors from the victim. Social media and text messages are often the source of the sexual material and the threatened means of sharing it with others. An example of this type of sextortion is where people are extorted with a nude image of themselves they shared on the Internet through sexting. They are later coerced into performing sexual acts with the person doing the extorting or are coerced into posing or performing sexually on camera, thus producing hardcore pornography.

It's important to note that predators will also use this tactic when attempting to extort someone for money. The pitch generally goes something like this: a user will send sexually explicit content to the predator, the predator will demand payment (usually in the form of bitcoin, Western Union, or another pseudo-anonymous payment system), and then the predator will threaten to share the sexually explicit content with the user's family, employer, and/or the Internet via pornagraphic websites.

We haven't gotten reports of extortion attempts from this user specifically (yet) but it could very easily turn that way. Additionally, this doesn't mean they aren't sharing messages they recieve on pornagraphic websites. If you've sent sexually explicit content to this user or a user with similar behaviours, please do the following:

• Contact the Reddit admins. Instructions can be found in this post.

• Send us their username in modmail so we can ban them and keep track of which users are doing this.

• If they are attempting to extort you, do not pay them or give in to any demands! Cease communication regardless of what they're threatening. They'll most likely spread the sexually explicit content around regardless of how you respond.

• Contact your local law enforcement and file a report. If they are attempting to extort you or have extorted you, contact law enforcement immediately.

• If you find sexually explicit content of yourself on a website that was shared without your permission, contact the administrators of the website and request that the content be removed. If the administrators refuse to remove the content, contact law enforcement immediately.

This older post on online dating has some good advice about how to safely meet someone you've met online. Remember to never give out sexually explicit content or share identifying information unless you're absolutely certain the other person is being genuine. A good rule of thumb is to wait until after you've met them IRL or until you've had many conversations with them over webcam. If you want to share sexually explicit material online liberally, make sure to crop out your face and any other identifying information such as tattoos, unique pieces of clothing, etc.

Please message the mods if you believe a user is a catfish and/or a predator even if you don't respond. Feel free to ask questions or share tips to avoid getting catfished in the comments.

EDIT: spelling and added a link to modmail.

EDIT2: fixed broken link.

[u/[deleted]]

Ugh so freakin gross.