My parents had been married for 30 years and 8 years ago my dad passed away. I encouraged my mom to get on social media so that we could keep up with each other. Before this, my mom hadn’t been interested in social media but signed up because I asked. My dad took care of the technical aspects of their lives. Growing up, my parents had always asked me not to talk to strangers, not to give out personal information in chatrooms, and never to meet anyone in person whom I had met online. I thought it sounded like good advice, and I didn’t think I’d have to give my mom the same advice almost 15 years later.

My mom began spending more and more time on social media. She discovered she could talk to people all over the world. About two years after my dad had passed away, a guy invited her to connect on one of the platforms. She accepted the invitation and began talking with this individual. We will call him Dan. I’m unsure how long my mom and Dan talked before she mentioned him to me. They appeared to be becoming romantically involved, although they had never met. Dan lived in Washington, D.C. (or so he said) and was a successful consultant. She shared some of the messages they exchanged, and it was at this point that I became concerned. Dan’s written English was rough for being a consultant, with things like misspelled words, words in the wrong order, and wrong words. I mentioned it to my mom. We decided to give Dan the benefit of the doubt that perhaps English was his second language.

A few months passed, and my mom and Dan continued to talk. Although now, Dan was sending her romantic letters over the social media platform. My mom shared how sweet Dan was and told me they had plans to meet. She was going to travel to meet him in D.C. I asked to see one of the letters, and after reading the first two sentences, my intuition told me something wasn’t right. I had my mom forward me the letter when I got home. The letter had excellent English and grammar. I grew suspicious and copied a few lines from the letter and Googled it. Almost 800 search results appeared with the words verbatim. It would appear that Dan was forwarding love letters to my mom, which he did not write. I let my mom know what I had found. She grew suspicious too.

At the time, I ran a web development company, and my website ran Google Analytics. One of the many features of Google Analytics is that it tracks user interactions on the website in real time. So, not only can I see that someone is viewing my website, but I can also retrieve geographic data on the user. So, I opened Google Analytics, sent my mom the link to my company website, and she forwarded the link to Dan. Dan, within minutes, clicked the link, and I got a new visitor. I pulled his geographic data, showing that he was not in Washington, D.C. but in Nigeria. When my mom asked Dan about this, he ghosted her. We reported his account to the social media platform, and it was removed.

I never thought I’d have to tell my mom not to talk to strangers or, in this case, not to add or accept invites from strangers on social media. Unfortunately, my mom isn’t the first one this has happened to, nor is she the last. Thankfully, we could identify Dan as a scammer before she lost any money. Some are not so lucky.

If you are in a similar situation and don’t have a website running Google Analytics, check out the app I made,Verfai (pronounced Verify). Verfai will create a link for you to send to someone you need to verify (the verifie), and once the connection is active, it will report back with location information. While there are ways to circumvent Verfai, this app works great for the not-so-tech-savvy scammers.