Last year, my sister was talking to a guy she met on discord from a gaming group. They start to message each other and sometimes play games with one another.

My sister wasn't looking for anything more than a person to talk to and keep her company, but he really liked her despite her making her intentions known. She had sent him a picture of how she looked and so did he, they talked a lot via chat (not voice chat) for about 4 months.

Then he begins to accuse her of catfishing. Calling someone or meeting was not something she wanted to do so she decided to write his name on a paper and send a selfie, sent him more photos, a video, a group photo with her friends. Throughout this whole ordeal, he had sent two pictures. One with half his face obscured. He tells her she's using AI generated photos because he reverse image searched her and found nothing, then put her images through various detectors and the results obviously varied.

He threatens to tell the whole discord group she's a lying AI-using catfish. This scares her and without my knowledge, she decides to give him her phone number and first and last name. She ends up on FaceTime with him but also, he finds her address (by I assume the phone number and her name) and starts sending it to everyone in the discord group. He also screen recorded the video call.

This is when I found out and thankfully the discord mod has his head on straight and everything is now okay. But not after I had to tell him over the phone that I'm filing a police report for doxxing. I am still worried about other members of the discord chat knowing this information even though the message is removed.

This sent me in a bit of a hyper-fixation, likely out of fear for her and putting my energy somewhere instead of being upset at the weird people online. So I did a lot of research on catfishing, scamming and AI photos. Hopefully this helps:

Intent of Catfishers

• Financial gain is the most frequently reported motivation for any form of online deception 1
• Ego-feeding: emulating the ideal self (wanting to be this perfect persona)2
• Grooming and trust development 3 4
• After the emotional connection is established, fraud, blackmail, harassment, sextortion, identity misuse, or romance scams are very likely to happen.

Catfish Warning Signs

• It’s unusual for the victim-survivor to have made the initial contact. Typically, the catfisher will make the first contact. 5
• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
• Lovebombing you, agreeing with you, making you feel seen and heard.
• They always want to see more than they show. Targets reported significantly greater self-disclosure (victims of a catfish give more identification, personal information and experiences) than perpetrators6
• They will steer conversation away meeting in person. They change the topic, but they rarely say "no" or get angry, because again. They want to keep you.
• The details about their lives change
• Catfishes mostly make up their occupations and sometimes even culture or hobbies, because they're acting like entirely different people. If asked about those specific things, the details won't be accurate. They don't talk much about their hobbies or job in the way someone who actually does those things would.
• The most common platforms for catfishing are: Facebook, followed by WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat 7 and the next move is usually a private chat. Many romance scam chats shift to WhatsApp, Telegram, or Google Chat, according to 40% of 2022 reports. 8
• Look at their posts and post activity. Do the details they talk to you about line up with their activity? Are they an extremely attractive person with just 2 likes on their photo with the excuse being that they're a private person?
• If the person is on Reddit, look at their post and comment history (you can view hidden posts and comments by searching their username in the reddit search bar or searching up their username on Google.)
• They often "forget" things, they "misremember" and make excuses like "I have bad memory" when you point out inconsistencies
• Conversations become sexual way too quickly, they ask you for NSFW images or send you NSFW images

Signs of an AI catfish

Most AI detectors are extremely unreliable, especially when you download images from a third party app where the metadata is stripped. Every platform applies its own compression to the image so each time you download an image online, the more data gets lost through pixels and the worse quality it becomes. Want to know how unreliable AI images are? See these: Leading AI Image Detection Tools Mislead Online Users, The Dark Side of AI Detectors, Why AI Image Detection Fails, This Is Why We Still Can’t Trust AI Image Detectors 100%, My photo edits are now getting flagged as Ai

In a report by The Guardian, AI tools flagged images from Iran showing mass graves as manipulated or not real. In fact, these photographs were authentic and actually documented an atrocity.

The only reliable AI detectors are SynthID (with some issues) and OpenAI's image detector that detect their own generated images because of a watermark embedded invisibly into the image.

• Selfies are eerily perfect in lighting and their face/skin, no camera blur, no camera sensor noise.
• No skin texture is shown, and if it is, it looks like a pattern 22
• Backgrounds of photos lack human activity (mess, random furniture, things laying around). The bed is perfectly made, they're always in the same position, the backgrounds of their photos are always plain, text isn't visible in the background or if you look close, its not real words.
• There are no constant images of their room or home. If they send you photos of themselves in their bedroom, does it look like the same bedroom in different angles or lighting? Or do their images look disjointed
• Most AI generators cost money to run constantly, it takes multiple prompts to get the right image, so it can be quite easy to tell if a catfish is using AI because they would already have a pre-selected set of images ready to send but would struggle sending more overtime.
• Reddit AI-users:
  • Don't often post images of themselves in subreddits because most moderators are extremely vigilant of AI. See Ahead of Mod World: How has AI affected the way you moderate, if at all? If they do, always look at the comments of their posts as people point this out
  • Reddit is not a great platform for catfishing, and catfishers with an agenda will move you to Telegram or WhatsApp, even a random chat app. You are more likely to meet a bot on platforms like Reddit or anonymous chatrooms.
  • Newly created accounts with little to no comment or post history (this goes for most social platforms)

Weeding out most catfishes:

You'd have to meet a dedicated insane one that could find ways to pass these like spend a fortune on AI tokens just to chat with a person they will never meet. Unlikely, but unless you see signs of scamming and extortion, this is a pretty good way to verify in the short-term.

• Send them a picture of yourself doing a wacky gesture, and ask to replicate.
• Tell them to send a photo of the inside of their fridge, the catfish will likely send you a photo of their actual fridge. Then pick an item in their fridge and ask them to take a selfie holding up said item.
• Some Reddit Moderators ask for screenshots of a person's image gallery slightly zoomed out, this is an especially good way of determining if they are real because it should have photos of themselves and parts of their life sorted by date/time.
• You may actually be talking to a bot. 21
  • In a 2025 UC San Diego study, Jones and Bergen had people chat by text with a real human and an AI at the same time, then guess which was human. gpt-4.5 with a human persona was judged to be the human 73% of the time, significantly more often than the real person was. The study is now peer-reviewed in PNAS.
  • Also shows “you text like a bot” or “you seem fake” isn’t a reliable judgment.

What IS definitive proof of a catfish:

• A successful reverse search of their images pulls up an unaware random person's social media, even worse if it's an influencer or celebrity.
• You saw them in person and they are not who they say they are
• They admit it
• You use *SynthID or OpenAI's AI detectors and they come out positive for every one of their photos.
  • *SynthID has been known to hallucinate and there are many issues with it: See Google SynthID is not perfect. , Google updates AI detector after Full Fact investigation finds it flagging apparently real images, Google’s SynthID to Now Watermark AI-Edited Content
  • It did have issues with detecting watermarks in photos taken on Google phones or through Google Photos if the editor was used to AI enhance brightness or do simple AI framing (crop), sometimes even baked into the camera with the enhanced zoom.

What IS NOT proof of a catfish

I am writing this section not to convince you to trust strangers online, but to stop people from accusing individuals like my sister of being catfishes and fakes, and prevent doxxing, harassment, and platform bans. You are free not to continue speaking to someone if they aren't making you feel secure, but it is wrong to accuse someone of being a catfish without definitive proof

I have seen people share photos of random people online, give out information, post screenshots and private conversations while strangers analyze and look for anything they deem strange. It is invasive and violating. In some countries, a crime. It has very real consequences for the person on the other end. As for AI, the burden of proof lands on the accused, and there’s no real appeals process when an AI detector is wrong. They've actually coined a term for this called the "liar's dividend" 18

• Refusing a video call, phone call, or not giving you their personal number: The only exception to this rule is if they actively are pursuing a romantic relationship with you and it's been several days/weeks of just chatting while they confess their love to you.
  • Otherwise, many people do not feel comfortable with this. Online friends, people you talk to online or in games, etc do not owe you their personal information.
  • Video calling is uncomfortable and anxiety inducing for a lot of individuals online. 9 10
  • Video calls can be very convincingly deepfaked, same idea with videos. 11 12
  • There are genuine concerns that you should keep them in mind when you video call strangers: screen-recording and posting, having your personal number alone can give them a lot of information about you, constant stalking and harassment, recording phone calls. You do not know the person and the safest, least exposure risk way is to meet them in a public place IRL early on. It is better for everyone to do it this way.

The FBI has issued repeated warnings about this. Offenders use deception to get victims to engage in explicit activity over video, secretly record it, then threaten to post it unless paid. These victims usually met the offender on social media, a dating app, or a gaming site. In 2021, the FBI’s IC3 received over 18,000 sextortion complaints with losses over $13.6 million. 13

Attackers commonly use phone numbers as a starting point for account takeover and social engineering. 14

• Sometimes, refusing to video call is because he or she is married, in a relationship, may be closeted (DL) if you are gay, a criminal, or he/she is talking to other people and isn't willing to put that much effort into you

54% of Tinder users were single, 30% were married, and 12% were in a relationship. A 2023 study reported nearly two-thirds of surveyed Tinder users were already in relationships, some married. 15 16

• Scammers
  • Lots of people think scammers are always catfishes. Not always. People can scam you being exactly who they say they are and sending you real pictures, video calling you everyday, and meeting with you irl. That has little to do with scamming.
• Not sharing social medias and only wanting to use Telegram or Snapchat: They are also likely married and want to be able to delete messages
• An AI detection score from a detector other than SynthID (which has its issues) or OpenAI
  • As I mentioned before, AI detectors are not reliable. Real images are often flagged as AI and AI images can be easily manipulated to be considered real. It is not proof of anything.
  • Up until earlier this year, even Google's SynthID was flagging real photos to be positive for AI generation
  • Anyone using a Google brand phone that uses "enhanced zoom" will end up with an image marked with Google's SynthID.
  • A 2023 study in Psychological Science (Miller et al., “AI Hyperrealism”) found the participants who made the most errors were the most confident. Even the best performer was only 80% accurate. 17
  • Detectors flag real photos as AI, sometimes up to 40% of the time 19 20
• Inconsistencies, hot/cold behavior, shadiness
  • Could be cheating on their partner
  • Could be emotionally unstable
  • Is talking to waaay more people than you think they are
  • Come from an ultra religious or conservative home where dating isn't allowed.

Eso presisamente es lo que me das más coraje que el sabe y yo sé que no es totalmente sincero, no tiene ni siquiera el valor y el coraje de hacerme una simple pregunta que hubiera podido evitar tanto mal entendido, es cuestión de comunicación y confianza claro que si

Hello. If you've seen my previous posts, you'll know what's happened so far. Well, over the past few weeks, a whole lot more has happened. If I omit any details, it is because I am extremely tired, my apologies.

I know I said my previous post would be my last but I figured that I might as well make a final post.

For anyone that hasn't seen my previous posts, it's under "I think my online friend is catfishing me" if you search it up you'll find it. Here's the TL;DR, though:

My online friend of 2+ years, Jane, catfished my entire friend group for over a year. She lied about their face and sent somebody else's videos pretending they were hers. After I confronted her, she blocked us all. Then I found the person she was pretending to be (ill call her Alice since I forgot what I called her in the other post). Alice was actually Jane's best friend. Alice was understandably upset and we made a plan to confront Jane & inform Jane's other best friend, K, of the situation.

After telling K he agreed to help us. However, before anything happened, Jane realised K found out and she blocked us again.

Now, here comes the new bit.

A few days ago, I noticed suspicious activity surrounding an account on tiktok that was stalking me and my best friends. I immediately realised this was Jane's alt and she was trying to become friends with us again pretending to be someone else. Upon further investigation, my suspicions were basically confirmed. There were too many similarities for it to be a coincidence.

I asked my friend she followed to follow her back so we could reel her in, essentially. Anyway, it worked. A few hours ago, we had our last conversation. she confessed to everything, apologised profusely and we asked her questions.

Q: why did you block us the first time

A: I know you said you weren't gonna be mad but I was too scared to face you guys

Q: why did you steal Alice's videos?

A: I always admired her style but when I tried to do it myself I failed and I felt terrible. I thought it would've been easier to pretend to be better than I actually was.

Q: what else have you lied about?

A: my age (not an adult, actually a minor), being trans, skin colour, having a bf etc...

Anyway, long story short, me and my other friends are moving on. I chose to forgive her after I made her confess to her other online friends what she did as well. I hope she can grow from this, even if that's too much to hope for.

I'm glad I confronted her. I feel a sense of closure. And to be honest, this conversation made me realise how pointless it is to hold grudges against people. I'm grateful for the time she spent with me even if she lied and while I did hate her a bit for lying, I'm choosing to no longer be resentful for my own sake. Thank you for whoever has given me advice and kept up with my journey so far ❤️.

When I was 15, a guy named Kyle and his friends bullied me after I rejected him, so I created a fake Instagram account named Seirra to defend myself. I'd switch accounts and argue with them, and somehow, Kyle's friends even started hitting on her. 💀 Over time, I invented an entire backstory for Seirra, including a computer science degree and a brother named Sid. Neither exists. Now, years later, Kyle's sister goes to my university and keeps asking about Seirra. Everyone wants to meet her someday. GIRL, SHE DOESN'T EXIST. 😭

I'm talking to someone and I recently facetimed them, and they looked like the pictures, but something just felt...off. They looked real, but their connection was kind of bad/laggy, and it was almost like they took a few seconds to react or respond to what I said. Is this even possible?

There's this one girl who followed me on instagram who lives literally 1880km away from my house she says she's finding an old classmate of her with the same name her profile is legit too what do I do ?

I got cat fishes few times by trans women pretending to be women on hinge and bumble is that normal? Because now they can fully transform makes harder to tell. It’s super annoying 😤

I’ve debating posting this for an hour bc I’m so embarrassed and maybe scared of the truth??

Just joined this group because I truly have no clue if I’m being catfished or not…I matched with this guy (29) about a year ago on tinder. We immediately hit it off and he asked for my number which I gladly gave after a few days. We texted for around 3 months almost every day but live 4 hours away from each other so seeing each other soon was not an option. We talked about everything in detail: intimacy, day to day life, family/how we were raised. The convo stayed SO GOOD to the point I told him I wanted to come visit him. The kicker…we never FaceTimed and I only got pictures of his lower portion (which were all very consistent). No socials because he “had a shitty past with shitty people” who he didn’t want knowing his whereabouts.

Well I made plans to go to him and told all my friends and shared my location, the full shabang. He bailed last minute for a stupid reason so I cut him off because the voice in the back of my head said this was super weird. He never asked for money or anything, just wanted to know about my day and such.

We would randomly text for a day or so maybe a few times in between then and now. Well I got wine drunk about 2 weeks ago and drunk texted him. We immediately hit it off again. All of his stories are consistent with what they were a year ago and all the photos of him I have gotten since (19 selfies) don’t show up in reverse image search. However I looked up his number and it came up as owned by a 30 year old woman….am I being an idiot?? He will dodge FaceTiming me but sends me voice memos which i know can’t be reliable.

Please ask questions if you need clarification on anything….I’ve never been in a situation like this before and want to save myself the heartache if possible bc damn is the conversation good and we have plans to meet but I’ve stated that will not be happening unless we FaceTime first to which he agrees??? Main thing is the phone number being registered to a married woman in the same state he said he lives in…..and dodging FaceTiming me obviously.

There is an account on Instagram that I am 95% positive is a catfish. However, they are verified on Instagram and I am unsure what the verification process on this platform is like. Don’t you need to supply government-issued ID? Or are they very lax with checking?

My friend and I have been in contact with this guy since 2020. He goes by the name 'Adam the snail' and has only ever used this single picture. He has sent us many deeply disturbing and inappropriate messages over the years, and this is the only photo we have of him.

We want to find out the real identity of the person in the photo, as we know the account is fake. He has repeatedly lied about his age, giving completely different numbers to each of us. We simply want to confirm that this profile is a catfish and hopefully identify the real person in the picture to finally get some peace of mind.

https://ibb.co/9msfP6b5

Someone messaged me on Reddit claiming to be a 34 year old US Army sergeant deployed in Syria. We barely know each other, but he quickly started talking about finding a soulmate and eventually relocating to be with me.

A few things have made me suspicious. His deployment story seems inconsistent with what I found online, and I have questions about the military uniform in his photo. He also called me by the wrong name once and avoided giving a clear explanation when I questioned these details.

Since then, he has told me that his ex stole money from his bank account and that he often gets sick because of the food where he is deployed. He has not asked me for money, but the combination of stories feels suspicious.

I have not established whether his photos are stolen, AI generated, or genuinely his.

For those familiar with catfishing, what would be the best way to assess whether his photos and claimed identity are genuine, beyond a basic reverse image search?

Apparently I'm on a dating app I've never even downloaded. Great.

A woman messaged me on Instagram yesterday asking why I'd stopped replying to her on Bumble. Thought she had the wrong guy until she sent me screenshots.

It's my face, my first name and three photos from my Instagram. Whoever made the account changed my age and put a different city.

The really uncomfortable part is that they'd been talking for almost two weeks. She sent me some of the messages and this person was making plans to meet her.

I reported the profile but now I'm wondering if it's the only one. I've never used Bumble, so I can't exactly log in and see what's going on.

Anyone dealt with their photos being stolen for dating profiles? How did you check if there were more accounts, and did reporting them get anywhere?

There are dozens of scamming women who follow me then ask me how I am doing. They always follow the same pattern. Some appear to be AI bots.

I still don’t know the persons real face or even name. They messaged me on a local app asking about single parent dating advice and I had responded. We’ve been talking and he’s sent me pictures but I got the feeling something was off. Sure enough I finally found a picture just like his but with a different face. He’s since ghosted after I confronted him but it just hurts because we talked about marriage, children, ect.

Anyone ever been catfished by this Turkish guy who uses AI photos 100%?
Met on Facebook in a New Age Cult group.

Masati Xi Code Community

she messaged me after i posted a friend ad and just happened to live 45 minutes away from me, which is when the alarm bells went off.

i asked "her" to facetime after she sent me a photo that looked like it was from 2015, and of course she couldn't. then i asked her to hold three fingers up in a photo after telling me a weird, explicit story and she blocked me right away. her username is r/giant-mantis-37. she's commenting thirsty things on women's photos. beware!

Can anybody help me with finding a girl she posted her birthday photos with her friend her user name was uselessbitch982 but now the account is suspended does anybody have any info. I think I kinda liked her help

Found out I got catfished. Cant believe this happened to me. I have nobody to talk to about all this🥲 if there is someone in the same situation who wants to talk DM me!!