David McLellan from SocialCatFish.com
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Summary
Catfishing is the practice of pretending to be someone else online to get money from unsuspecting victims. In this episode, we talk to David McClellan of Social Catfish about the dangers of catfishing and how to protect yourself online.
Transcript
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I am going to cut over to him right away and we'll discuss that other issue we wanted to get on to
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today. So this is David McClellan of Social Catfish. And hey there, David, how are you doing?
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Hey, how's it going? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
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Well, I appreciate you joining us today. This is an interesting subject. It was a very interesting
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release and the services you guys provide. But maybe, you know, for our viewers and listeners,
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if you could kind of give in a nutshell a background on what catfishing is and how that puts
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people at risk. Yeah, absolutely. So catfishing is essentially pretending to be somebody else online.
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And so when we started the company eight years ago, you know, we thought it was this, you know,
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thing where you had a bunch of insecure people on the Internet, you know, using other people's
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pictures and, you know, a semi harmless way. And what we quickly realized is like most of the catfishing
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that actually happens is are people that are actually trying to scam people out of money.
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Yeah. And this can be very serious. I mean, not just, you know, scamming people out of money. I
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mean, it can bankrupt them or cause a lot of social damage or I mean, the humiliation factor,
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just like anybody with online ripoffs, they don't want to report or could even lead to suicide if it's
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bad enough. Yeah, absolutely. We have a huge network of about a million plus people. And what we found
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out is only about one in every three people report these types of scams because they're too
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embarrassed. And so social catfish, what my company does, we help people find and verify
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people online with a focus on online safety. So that like weird phone number that you get
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that calls you if you're meeting somebody in line for the first time, or you just want to know where
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your information is online to be safe, you can use a service like ours. And that's what we do.
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Yeah. So your service kind of covers two fronts in a sense. I mean, there's not just
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the people who have been contacted by perhaps a false identity out there,
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but somebody might be using your pictures and identity and contacting others as well out there,
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and you don't know it. Yeah, absolutely. You'd be shocked how often that happens.
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You know, anybody who's public on the internet is, you know, a potential victim. So what happens is
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these scammers, they go online, they find profiles that have a lot of pictures, they download all the
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pictures or screenshot all the pictures, and then they put them on dating sites, social networks,
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forums, chat rooms, basically anywhere where you can chat with people. And they use those pictures,
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and they build this backstory to meet people and coerce them into giving them money.
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Yeah, so it's good to have a service though, where you can verify these because I mean,
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not everything on the internet's bad. I mean, I met my wife through a social media site 17 years ago,
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I mean, you know, more of the primordial online meetings, and still to this day, she's putting up with
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me, I mean, it was a good match, and we did all right. So I mean, you don't want to lose all the
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value of being able to meet people and interact online. But with those risks out there, I guess
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you want to mitigate them as much as possible. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we say this all the time
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that, you know, you go to school, right, and you learn about math and science and history, you even
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learn about sex and drugs, but you don't learn about online safety. And so those are things that have to
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change. You know, that's why our service exists, and we do all the work that we do. But 100%, the internet's this
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amazing, beautiful place that you can learn, and you can meet people and interact, especially during
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COVID, we saw a lot of that. But there's, it's also still the wild, wild west and, and the internet's
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still in its infancy, you know, even though it's been around for, you know, 30 plus years, it's
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continually changing, we're seeing so many things change. And what we've learned is that every time
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technology changes, or new platform emerges, a new rush of scams comes out. Well, then safety is
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another aspect you mentioned, there's a lot of cases we read, unfortunately, more and more of
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child luring that goes on. And sometimes it's been a profile of a grown person pretending to be younger,
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and then luring in a younger person into, you know, eventually meeting in person or things like that,
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it can be terribly dangerous. Does your service provide things for parents to be able to apply
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or things like that to check? Or how does that work? So what you can do with our service is you can
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go and plug information. So you can go and, and put in a picture, a phone number, a username, and
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you can see anything that's attached to that that's public online, we call them footprints, you know, so
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most people, you know, my name is David McClellan. And, you know, I go and I have usernames online. And, and if
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you go and create a new profile online, those usernames are typically, you know, using the same username is
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typically easier for me to remember. And so, and usually using similar profile pictures. And so
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we use those things to validate like who people are online. So if your children are talking to somebody,
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first of all, I don't let my children talk to anybody that they don't know online, you know,
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that's, that's really the solution. But if, you know, if you're talking to somebody, or, you know,
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somebody's talking to somebody online, you can always throw in a picture, you can put in a username,
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a phone number, an email, and you can see the backstory on that and see how long it's,
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it's been in existence, if it's been reported for fraud or scams, you know, if it's attached to
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somebody with a different name, which raises a red flag, and we'll even give you ages if we have it.
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So a lot of things you can do to just look up some basic information, do it very quickly,
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and just make sure you're making the right decisions.
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So with a lot of this that's going on, I mean, particularly with the rip offs, is this like
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organized groups or these overseas groups, you know, call center type things, I guess you could say,
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or is it often domestic people doing these impersonations?
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Yeah, so it's definitely a combination of the two, we typically see most of these scams overseas.
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So in places like Lagos, Nigeria, Russia, the Philippines, China. And so, you know, typically
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in those countries, they're not really scared of getting caught. You know, the problem is the
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jurisdiction, like our countries don't talk to each other very well, and we don't work with each other
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very well. And so, you know, we tend to see a lot of scams over there, people in the US definitely get
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involved, but they typically get arrested. There's people in Canada, you know, get involved, but
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they're typically get arrested because we all have more jurisdiction. The people that do this in the
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States tend to be people that are like become money mules. So somebody's contacted them from overseas,
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said, Hey, will you do this for me? Will you help me out? They get, they become a money mule and start
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money laundering. And now they get in a position where they can get in a lot of trouble.
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Yeah. And looking at your site there at socialcatfish.com, I see you offer a lot of resources
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as well, like just to help educate people. I mean, not just the ability to check these profiles,
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but a lot of blog postings, reviewing different dating apps and things such as that. So people have
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some background to start with. Yeah, we spend a lot of time doing things that, you know, we don't
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necessarily get paid for. And so, but we believe it's really important to educate people and show
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people what's really happening. You know, with the polling that we've done, the people we've talked to,
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most people don't come out and don't report these types of scams. You know, there's a massive amount
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of money that's being lost every year, hundreds of millions of dollars. And if we don't report the
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stuff, we don't educate people, this is going to continue to get worse. Well, and speaking of reporting
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though, so as well, once somebody, if they they've checked a profile, they found out, yes, this is
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a scammer, this isn't legitimate. Are there ways that you guys will follow through at least to hope,
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hopefully start wiping that profile off or flagging it for other people in the future, or at least, you
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know, trying to catch these guys a bit? Yeah, so we have an internal group where we go and actually,
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we have volunteers that go in the report fake profiles. As you can imagine, it's a massive task. I mean,
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we delete, we report about 1500 profiles a day, you know, on various social networks. What you can
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do is if you do see fake profiles on social media or dating sites or specific apps, like most of those
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have reporting features or functions. And so we highly encourage you go and report those. Doesn't
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mean that we'll always get taken down, but we go and highly suggest that you go and look at those and
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fill those out. Yeah, I mean, it provides a service to that can give a person peace of mind. I mean,
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maybe they're developing what does seem to be a promising relationship, and it can help them relax
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when they've checked out the profile. Hey, this is real, I can carry on and perhaps meet somebody and
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get more personal. But, you know, you can lose that inhibition, I guess, well, I shouldn't say that's the
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wrong term for it, but you know, your worries about it. So it's a valuable service that way, too. It
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doesn't always have to be a negative outcome. Yeah, I mean, you know, we just had somebody come to us the other day,
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and they met somebody at a concert, and they really hit it off. And they came to us and said,
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Hey, look, I just have a picture. Can you find this woman? And so, you know, we say, Hey, look,
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what we'll do is if we can find her, we'll contact her. And if she wants to get in contact with you,
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we'll, we'll, we'll essentially match me. And so we finally got we found her Facebook profile,
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we messaged her, and she's like, Sure, send in my information. So, I mean,
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there are definitely some good outcomes. And, and, you know, you know, not everything we do is
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involving scams, sometimes just people coming to us to be proactive. But we definitely do that,
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that sort of thing, too. And I appreciate where you went at first, I thought, Whoa,
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these guys are facilitating stalking. Oh, no, you did check with her before having more content.
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Yeah, we don't give any information out until they we get the A-OK to do so.
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Right. So is it a subscription sort of service then for what you guys provide? And then you have kind of an
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ongoing access? Yeah, so there are a few different plans that we have. You can run very,
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very basic searches for free. It is a paid subscription to actually use the full service,
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but it's unlimited searching. So for, you know, a little under like $7, you can go and you can run
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unlimited searching. And then for a little under $30, you can have a monthly subscription access to all
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the services. We do have a what's called an in-depth search where you can hire us and we'll do the
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searching. So we use tools that that we don't use for everyday users. So things like people typically
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come to us if they've been involved in like crypto scams. And so we have tools to go and and track and
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trace, you know, wallet addresses for for crypto scams and other look at other types of public information.
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So that one costs a little and over $300 to do. Okay, well, that's it's great to know. I mean,
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as I said, you know, the internet is a big Wild West in a way. I mean, that's part of what the beauty
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of the internet is. But unfortunately, there's a lot of hazards too. And then people can't necessarily
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pay attention to everything. So having a service to help protect themselves and feel, you know,
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safer and more comfortable is a is a really great idea. And it seems to be doing quite well out there.
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Is there more information you'd like to share on how people can check out your service and get in touch with it?
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Yeah, I mean, definitely go to social catfish.com. It's a great resource. We put out a YouTube video
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every Wednesday. And so we have a channel called Scamfish, where we actually take people that have
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been victims of online scams, and we profile exactly what happened to them, we break them down,
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we do real investigations, we do 52 episodes a year. But they're really educational, because we break down
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exactly how the scams work, why they worked, and all the information we found out. So you can check
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Well, that's excellent. That lets people know, too. I mean, this can happen to anybody, you know,
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they shouldn't be ashamed. I mean, these, there's some very smart, subtle scammers out there. And if
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you got nailed, it's still better to, to speak up and follow through rather than let them get away with
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All right. Well, thank you very much for coming on today to talk about that service,
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and for putting it together. You know, the more we can see those, those kind of predatory people on
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there, taken to task, and the more other people can enjoy the internet properly is all the better.
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So thanks again. And maybe we'll talk again down the road.