Dating safety and romance scams

The short version

1. Never send money — not for a ticket, a visa, a phone, a sick relative, a customs fee or a "verification". Not once. Not as a loan.
2. Keep the conversation on the site until you have seen each other on video more than once.
3. Ask for a video call early. A real person will agree; a scammer will always have a reason not to. Why a call settles more than any other check.
4. Slow down when someone speeds up. Love in a week, plans in two, a crisis in three is the script, not a romance.
5. Tell us. Reporting costs you nothing and it is how the next person is protected.

How a romance scam works

The pattern is the same everywhere and has been for years, which is why consumer protection agencies describe it in almost identical words. Someone builds trust quickly — long affectionate messages, talk of a future, an eagerness to be exclusive — and then produces a reason why money is needed: a plane ticket to visit you, a medical emergency, a problem with a visa or customs, a phone or laptop so you can keep talking, a fee to "unlock" something. The request is urgent, it is framed as temporary, and it is followed by another one. The person may be real, may be a photograph, or may be a team; it does not matter, because the money is the point.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the FBI and Europol all publish plain-language guides to this pattern; their advice is the same as ours, and reading one of them is worth ten minutes of your time before you write your first letter.

Warning signs, in the order they usually appear

• She wants to move to email, WhatsApp, Telegram or another app in the first messages, "because it is easier".
• Declarations of love before you have spoken on video.
• A video call is always impossible: bad camera, bad internet, shyness, a broken phone — for weeks.
• A crisis appears, and only money can solve it. The amount is often modest at first.
• A trip to visit you is arranged and then hits a paid obstacle: a ticket, a visa, a "travel insurance", a customs deposit.
• You are asked to keep the arrangement private, to hurry, or to pay through gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfer or a friend's account.
• The story changes when you ask a plain question.

One of these on its own can be innocent. Two together deserve a pause. A request for money is not a sign — it is the thing itself. A separate guide takes them one at a time and sorts out which red flags are real and which only look like them.

What AnnaBrides does

• Money never changes hands between members. The site has no feature for sending money to a member, and everything you buy here is paid to the site in credits, never to her. A request for money is therefore always a request to go around the site — treat it that way.
• A moderator reviews every new women's profile and can take it down. Some profiles are also checked against an identity document, and others are not. The details, including what is not checked, are on the profile verification page.
• Reports are read by a person. You can report or block someone without leaving the page you are on: the same menu sits on every profile, on every card in Members, at the top of a conversation and beside a letter. Blocking is instant and mutual — a blocked member cannot message you, write to you or call you, and you stop seeing each other. Undo it any time in Settings → Safety. A profile that asks a member for money is removed and the account behind it is closed.
• Video calls are built in, so you never have to give a phone number or an account on another app to see someone's face.
• Your details stay yours. Your email address and payment details are never shown on your profile, and we will never email you to ask for your password.

"Is AnnaBrides safe?" — how to check without taking our word for it

Look up the company: ANNABRIDES LTD, number 17430138, on the UK register. Read the refund policy and compare the prices with what the payment page shows. Ask for a video call early — a real person will agree. Note what the site cannot do: it has no feature for sending money to a member, so any request for money is a request to leave the site, and that is the moment to report it. If a search for "anna brides scam" shows you bridal shops and marketplace sellers, that is a different business with a similar name.

What we will never ask you for

We will never ask for your password, your full card number, a payment to a person, a payment by gift card or cryptocurrency, or a payment to "verify" your account or "release" a message. An email or message that asks for any of these is not from us, whatever it looks like; forward it to support@annabrides.com.

Our anti-scam policy: what is moderated, and how to report

The policy is short enough to state in full. A moderator reviews every new women's profile — some before it appears, the rest once it is live — and can take any profile down. Messages that are reported to us are read by a person, and we look across the site for the scam pattern — requests for money, an early push to another app, the same text sent to many members. A profile that asks a member for money is removed, and a profile under investigation can be hidden while we look. What is and is not checked about a profile is set out on the verification page linked above; this page is about what happens when something goes wrong anyway.

How the schemes on sites of this kind actually work, and how to tell an honest site from a dishonest one, is written up separately in our guide to Ukrainian dating scams.

To report a profile or a message, write to support@annabrides.com with the member's name, the address of the profile page if you have it, and a screenshot. Safety reports are read first and answered within one working day; you do not need to be sure, and you will be told what we found. What you can check about a person yourself, before you report, is in our guide to finding out who you are actually talking to.

Meeting in person

When you decide to meet, decide it after several video calls, not instead of them. Make your own travel arrangements and pay for them yourself; do not send money for her to travel to you. Meet in a public place, tell someone at home where you are, and keep your documents and your return ticket in your own hands. Travelling to a country at war has its own risks that have nothing to do with dating: check your government's travel advice before you book. Before you book anything at all, go through the list of things to verify before a first trip; it is written to be printed.

If you have already sent money

Stop contact, do not send more, and tell your bank or card issuer at once — a recent payment can sometimes be reversed. Then tell us, with the profile and the messages, so the profile can be removed. Report it to the police or your country's fraud-reporting service as well; the report matters even when the money cannot be recovered. You have not done anything foolish. These scripts are written by people who do this for a living, and they work on careful people.