As the Administrator for the Young, Widowed & Dating online group, I’m often bombarded with requests from people wishing to become a member. I work tirelessly to keep the group as “safe” as possible and make every attempt to screen members before allowing them access.

Quite often, it’s very obvious that the potential member is widowed. There are touching tributes to their spouses posted on their Facebook page or commentary from family and friends offering prayers and words of comfort.

Sometimes though, if they are like me, there are no “rest in peace” posts and I have to do a bit of poking around to make sure they are in fact widowed and aren’t seeking a potential victim. I can’t guarantee that no one has slipped though the crack, but so far there haven’t been any major incidents.

As a widow, I get quite a few unsolicited friend requests from strangers. They see I’m the Admin for the group and randomly reach out. Many of the YW&D members, especially those who have “widowed” as their relationship status, receive an exorbitant amount of friend requests. While I’m sure most people have good intentions, you can never be too careful. Here are a few tips I use to keep my group safe that may be of help:

1. Do you have friends in common?
2. Is their profile image a real picture or one of a celebrity?
3. Check out their “Friends”—Are they all scantily clad women? Do they have an unusually low/high number of friends?
4. Look at their “Intro”—Does he “work” overseas? This can be a red flag associated with many scammers.
5. Review the “Groups” they belong to—The woman who belongs to the “Single Mom Seeking Faithful Boyfriend from All Over the World” group who sent you a friend request probably needs to be vetted before accepting her request.
6. Scan their photos.
7. If their posts are public, take a look at the comments others leave on their page. You’d be surprised at what you can uncover.
8. There’s nothing wrong with sending the person who requests your friendship a message to ask why they’ve reached out to you.
9. If you’re still unsure about the suave man in the military uniform who has caught your eye, consider doing a reverse image search on Google. You’ll be able to see every place that image has appeared online including websites warning about scammers.
10. If you accept someone’s request and you’re made to feel uncomfortable in any way, don’t hesitate to unfriend and/or block him/her.