You’ve probably seen them, and maybe even had a momentary urge to click on one. “HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA” Just such a convenience that they were online at the same moment you were and wanted to chat about how horny they were. Well, as you might guess. It was too good to be true. But to satisfy everyone’s curiosity here are some stories shared online about what goes on behind the ads that are “too good to be true.”

“I was once a horny 18 year old who just moved to a new city for college and I knew nobody. Through one of those pop ups, I found a hookup site that was something cheap like $3 a month. I signed up for the free account and got some messages, but to reply, I needed to be a paying member. I put $10 on a prepaid Visa card so that if I got scammed, it was ONLY for $10. The one month I had the account, I got no messages. The day my month expired, I got 7 messages from different girls who would be way out my league if they were real. Not being stupid enough to fall for it again, I closed my account. $3 spent to learn that those websites are bullshit is a fairly cheap lesson.”

“My uncle used to work for one of those scam dating sites. He sets up the fake profiles and would manually chat with visitors. The site would steal your credit card info and he gets paid $20 for each cc info he manages to obtain.”

“Not signed up as such but a mate of mine met a girl on one of these cam sites you can just flick through. She was amazing and did everything you want including getting him to play as well. She added him on Facebook. Legit pictures apparently and she was gorgeous. Next minute she disappears off camera and instead a video plays of him jacking off. She comes back and says it’s going to cost him £500 or she’ll send it to his entire Facebook list. He panicked, deleted his entire Facebook account and to this day is too scared of opening it back up just incase.”

“My dad, rest him, kept getting viruses on his laptop because of these ads. But it’s the specific ones that “chat” at you by name, you know? So he knew, in retrospect, that these ads were what was messing up his computer, but he kept falling for them because they would address him by name, so he always figured that it MUST be someone he knew, because they just wouldn’t chat and call him by first name otherwise, right?”

“Penis pills. Gave me stomach issues for like 6 months.”

“My old roommate got scammed by advertisements like this. Bought a book for 50 dollars called the ironman’s penis. It gave him like exercises and shit to do to grow his Penis size. It obviously did nothing. But he didn’t stick with it for very long gave up. When he told us about it we told him he was scammed.”

“Serious reply here: one day I was curious so i just thought fuck it and signed up with a fake ID. It was some kind of dating site where men are only sporadically allowed. Of course I was one of the happy few. The site itself seemed like a regular dating site. The main difference was that a ton of ladies were sending me messages. They actually seemed really interested but obviously they were all bots. They wanted you to sign up for a premium account for a monthly fee but I was not curious enough for that. It was quite the anticlimax.”

“I used to be one of those folk who bought those ads to promote those sites. 90% are cash grabs populated by bots or paid chicks to lead guys on.”

“I have a handful of friends who are cam girls. One of them had their secret get out when her face started popping up in those “girls in your area” ads. Cant really convince anyone you’re an online English teacher anymore. Those are the sites where you gotta pay to see them masturbate and whatnot online. They work in an building with cubicles that are made to look like bedrooms. Once they prove that they’re reliable they can start camming from their own house. You would never actually be able to meet them.”

“I remember when I was like 15 I came across some Russian girl (probably a bot) and I ended up emailing her all the time. They never asked for money but they just talked about their life and stuff. It was like a pen pal that sent me nudes every once in awhile. Then one day they stopped just responding and I haven’t clicked any of those links since. Maybe she was supposed to scam me but had cold feet?”

“I used to work at one of those places that provides captions for hearing impaired telephone users, and I listened to one side of a call between an old man and his adult daughter. “Dad…I told you DO NOT CLICK ON THOSE LINKS!” (Can’t hear what old man is saying) “NO! I am not replacing another computer for you! I TOLD YOU DO NOT CLICK ON THOSE LINKS!” (Can’t hear what old man is saying) “Do you really think there are single girls in your area?…IN NORTH DAKOTA!? YOU’RE 85 YEARS OLD, WHY WOULD THEY WANT TO MEET YOU?”

“I used to be a bottle server at a night club. I had these regulars who would often come in once, twice, or three times a week. They would rack up bills often times as high as $3,000 on a regular basis. They were quite young, probably late 20s. I served them consistently for months. They were always very secretive about what they did to make all of that money. Over time, I pieced together enough little bits of information I had gathered from various members of their group at various times and finally figured out their source of wealth. They stole people’s identities and credit card information through pop up ads on porn sites. They were all computer wizards and seemingly worked separately and independently but somehow found each other through some underground community meetup of hackers and scammers IIRC. “

“I was a young 18 year old lad and bored. Saw the usual ad of click here for fun girls in your area and I thought to myself that I had fraud protection, I’m good. The website took my card info and immediately started racking up random charges for gift cards and premium services. I called the bank’s support line quite nervous as I was paying for adult services and was still uncomfortable talking about that type of thing. The guy at the bank was a total bro and literally said; “You lost your card at the mall? I’m so sorry to hear that. Let me reverse these charges and get you a new card.” Never once did I mention a lost card or mall.”

“I clicked one of the ads for one of those $1 trials to one of the big name porn sites. Figured I’d see what might make porn actually worth paying for and either way I’d only be out a dollar. First it ended up being $2, not because of any weird fees, but they charged my card twice. But I trudged on because eh what’s $2, and I can bitch at them later. So I get their email like ,”Thanks for signing up for the trial click here to check out our content.” I click there. I immediately get two more emails, being charged twice in the amount of something like $40 each. So at this point I don’t even bother, I immediately close everything and fire up their customer support.”

“There was an ad about the psychology of women and how to get laid more often. Spoiler, it is a man on a 30 minute video talking about nonsense. Then at the end he gloats about his money. I now know the secret to getting laid more often. Find a girl, talk to her about nothing important, tell her I have money, invite to my place. Works 2/3 times.”

“A friend was active military in Afghanistan. He used to joke that he’d see those ads “beautiful girl 3 miles from your location wants to meet you” and he’d be like “gtfo of there, you’re in danger, this is not time to be looking for guys on the internet”.”

“My boyfriend started paying $7 to send a message, $7 to open a message to a pretty girl online. They fell in love. So I made a fake account and got this same girl to propose to me within a single message. My BF didn’t find out that I had done this, but he did see the evidence of the rest, and the boyfriend is no more.”

“Couple of years ago a young guy (must be a teenager around 16-17) came to my door and told me that he is looking for this girl, whom he met through some stupid porn dating site and she gave him my address to meet . I told him that I live here by myself (am a 28 years old guy) and all the women who have been here since I have moved in here are not the porn dating site type I believe. But he was too adamant and was sweating hard by now. So I asked him to come in and sit and gave him a glass of water. Then I asked him that how much he paid for that, he looked down and said $750, so again I asked that how he managed to pay, he replied: “Mum’s card”. So after a small unofficial counseling, I convinced him to call his parents to my place and played a mediator between the two parties. We all adults decided to report this to the police since my address has also been used for the fraud and mother immediately blocked her card. Family invited me for dinner for keeping their son calm during the panicking situation and we all laughed over a drink after the poor kid went to sleep.”

“Not online, but two of my grandpa’s sisters were actually mail order brides. They’re both old as dust, so this all happened through actual handwritten mail. Funny part is that my great grandma wrote all the correspondences for them. She basically catfished these white American dudes so that her daughters could get married and move across the world, and then subsequently petition for the rest of the family to immigrate. Both of the marriages were very happy. But when one of my uncles told my aunt “I fell in love with you because of your letters,” my entire family was sweating.”