Over 30 million Russians may fall victim to dating site scammers in 2025. Attackers are "attacking" users with deepfakes, said Tatyana Deshkina, Head of Product Portfolio at VisionLabs.
More than 30 million Russians may be the target of deepfake attacks on dating sites in 2025. This number of users use dating chatbots in messengers and dating sites, where they are exposed to attacks using deepfake technology.
Scammers create fake accounts, and artificial intelligence technologies based on generation allow them to mimic communication using the image and voice of a real person.
With the help of deepfake technologies, convincing photos and videos are created. This allows fraudsters to manipulate users' emotions, forcing them to transfer money. In addition, after establishing communication, attackers can blackmail their victim, threatening to distribute personal photos and videos that they, for example, could send during correspondence.
Victims do not always decide to report to the police due to moral considerations, so criminals commit many similar "attacks". Since the criminals remain unknown, such schemes are difficult to detect and prevent.
To protect yourself from such threats, we recommend being careful when communicating with strangers online. You should use reverse image search tools to verify profiles, and also be attentive to requests for help. Suspicious cases must be reported to the platform's technical support or the police.
According to Deshkina, such attacks can be prevented by providing access to resources on biometric data, as well as using other authorization methods, including document verification. This will weed out fake user pages.
However, as the expert noted, many resources deliberately refuse to introduce additional checks, because the number of users of the service seems much larger due to fake pages.
By the end of 2024, the number of users of Russian dating services increased by 25.3% compared to 2023. Estimates of market shares varied, but they all noted that the audience is becoming more active, as people are getting used to using such services.
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