Hi guys, I am new here and I hope the mods allow me to post this here because I really need help. I joined SA about a month ago. Now I don't know if I am being scammed or in major trouble. So like most of you, I created a profile and got a phone app and started chatting with some girls. I talked to them about the arrangements, etc. About a week ago I received a phone call from a number that I didn't recognize. I never bothered to answer it. A few days later (last Thursday) I got a text that said "Hi, is this (STEVE) from SA?" So of course I replied back Yes. I gave my number to a bunch of girls and wasn't sure who it was. Anyway this person said "You just admitted you are (STEVE) from SA." I said who are you, she replied "Your worst f***ing nightmare." Then was sending me screen shots of a conversation I had with this girl and said she was going to contact the police because I admitted I was (Steve) from SA. She was saying I am a creep for texting things to young girls, etc. Of course that makes me think of the real age of the girl. Who knows if she lied to me.
So I didn't have my glasses on to really see the screen shots, but I think the girl she was referring to was this young latina girl who first had an account in Westbury. She was thin and her private photos had her in a bra. I completely freaked out and basically deleted everything. Here I am like 5 days later and I cannot sleep, eat, I feel like I ruined my life and I have a family, etc. I never met this girl, we just talked a little too much detail about meeting and what we would do. Please tell me if anyone has dealt with this or this girl. So she was Latina, I don't know her name, but her profile said she was 18 and in Westbury. I created another free account the other day to see if she was on there, but didn't see her. I did see a new account from a girl who looked similar, but different picture who said she is from Freeport, but that account is now gone. Please help me. I am at a loss. I don't know if I should be looking for an attorney. Am I being scammed? Thank you so much!
It’s going to be hard to relax, given the shock of what occurred, but realistically you probably don’t have anything to worry about as long as they don’t know your identity. Most of these types of things are extortion attempts. Have they asked you for $? Do you really think the local police department is going to get a subpoena for google voice or hushed to reveal who has the number that sent the texts? For an ambiguous soliciting case? The real threat is if they have your identity and are threatening to tell your SO, at which point you’ll need to pay up, fess up, or start practicing your story how you’ve been innocently targeted by con artists.
Here are some tips I’ve learned on this forum and in the field:
1. Always use a burner phone or app. Stay anonymous at the very least until you have met in person. You’ll weed out 99% of scams this way and if you do break your anonymity in person, your more likely to be burned by a scorned SB than a premeditated scam. Do not use this phone for anything other than SA. If it gets associated with any social media accounts, you’re likely outed.
2. Don’t use any pics for SA that you use anywhere else. You’ll risk being found via reverse image searches.
3. Keep all your real social media accounts private and don’t use identifiable profile pics...use your pet or something. I used to think this was erring on the side of paranoia, but now I think it’s almost as important as 1 and 2. If you’re familiar with Apple, amazon and facebooks facial recognition capabilities, you’ll know we are an inch away from being able to ID virtually anyone from a pic. Social media friend suggestions have become so slick that you’re likely to show up as a suggested contact (same locations at the same time, info sharing between apps on your phone, I really don’t know but I’ve had girls who use burners show up as suggested friends for reasons I don’t know and I assume I likely have been a friend suggestion for them). It’s also fairly easy with a little time to take a sparse amount of info about someone and find their online profiles. If you know what someone looks like and the field they are in and the area of the country they reside, you’ll probably turn up if someone is searching you out on IG or FB or especially LI.
4. It’s good to scope out potential SBs on their social media but make sure you know how these platforms work, if you like a photo or watch a story from your real account, they’ll see that.
Best of luck, hope to see a follow up on how this turns out.