With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned Americans to be on the lookout for cyber-based romance scams.

The Richmond, Virginia, branch of the FBI said criminals used the most romantic day of the year as an opportunity to con victims out of their hard-earned cash or personal data. For these heartless cyber-villains, websites and apps intended to aid people in their quest to find love are nothing more than prime hunting grounds brimming with easily exploitable victims. 

In a warning released on Monday, the FBI wrote: “Valentine’s Day and the days leading up to it can be exciting, but it can also lead to heartbreak, embarrassment, and financial loss. 

“Well-rehearsed criminals search dating sites, apps, chat rooms, and other social media networking sites attempting to build ‘relationships’ for the sole purpose of getting your money or your personally identifiable information.”

To help romance seekers stay safe, the FBI issued seven guidelines to follow when looking for love online.

Advice to “only use reputable, nationally-recognized dating websites,” was accompanied with the important message that scammers may be using these sites as well. 

Users were advised to perform a background check of their potential love match, using online search tools to verify photos and profiles and asking questions. 

“Do not blindly believe the stories of severe life circumstances, tragedies, family deaths, injuries, or other hardships geared at keeping your interest and concern,” warned the Bureau. 

The FBI urged users never to provide their financial information, loan money, or allow their bank accounts to be used for transfers of funds. 

Anyone who has formed a romantic connection via the internet and is planning to arrange a meeting in real life should make sure that they meet in a public place and that they tell a friend where they are going, whom they are meeting, and when they will be returning home. Any attempts to isolate a user from their family and friends should be avoided at all costs.

According to the FBI, victims may be hesitant to report being taken advantage of by a romance scammer due to embarrassment, shame, or humiliation. 

“It’s important to remember, romance scams can happen to anyone at any time,” the FBI warned.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions, part of RELX, is to acquire global provider of fraud prevention and risk management solutions, Emailage.

Under the terms of the deal, Emailage will become a part of the Business Services group of LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

News of the upcoming acquisition was announced yesterday, though details of the financial sums involved were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to customary conditions and regulatory consents and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2020.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions already has an established commercial partnership with Emailage to offer email risk assessment to customers around the world. The acquisition of Emailage is a key indicator of LexisNexis’ commitment to augmenting organic growth with strategic acquisitions.

Founded in 2012 and based in the Phoenix metro area, with offices across the globe, Emailage helps organizations reduce online fraud by building multi-dimensional profiles associated with customer email addresses to render predictive risk scores. 

Rick Trainor, CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Business Services, said the acquisition was a natural fit that would benefit customers.

“We are continuously evolving our fraud prevention and identity assessment solutions to help our customers fight fraud. Emailage’s broad email and digital data attributes network, inquiry data and confirmed fraud feedback complement our deep expertise in contributory data management and linking technology,” said Trainor. 

“This strategic acquisition will expand our digital identity intelligence and fraud prevention services, providing our customers an even more comprehensive view into consumers for more predictive risk assessment.”

CEO of Emailage Rei Carvalho said the planned transaction was a flattering compliment to what the 8-year-old company has achieved. 

“LexisNexis Risk Solutions is laser-focused on providing its customers a 360-degree view into an identity, which aligns with our mission to help customers who seek fast, low-friction, global digital identity fraud solutions to combat fraud without sacrificing consumer experience,” said Carvalho. 

“We are thrilled to be recognized as a pioneer in email intelligence-based fraud risk scoring solutions and look forward to aligning our solutions to help organizations fight fraud on a more comprehensive level.”

YouTube has issued a public reminder that deepfakes related to the 2020 US presidential election are banned from its video service. 

The Google-owned company has said that it doesn’t want its platform to be exploited as part of any deliberate attempts to mislead viewers regarding voting procedures or influence their choice of candidate.

A deepfake is altered video content that has been doctored to show something that didn’t actually happen, and the results can be worryingly convincing. 

Last year, YouTube became the first major social media platform to remove a deepfake video of Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. The clip had been slowed down to make it appear that Pelosi was slurring her words, causing her to come across as almost drunk enough to start a conga line. 

YouTube has also issued a reminder this week that “birther” videos, which cast doubt on the authenticity of a candidate’s birth certificate to imply that they were born outside the United States, are banned. 

Neither of these policies is new, but YouTube clarified its rules ahead of the now famously disastrous Iowa caucuses, which took place on Monday. Guidelines regarding this type of content were already in place back in 2016 ahead of the election campaign that saw President Donald Trump take office.

Restrictions have not been imposed on videos in which speech has been selectively clipped to appear out of context, though content of this nature can be as misleading and influential as any deepfake. 

Facebook, which faced criticism last year for refusing to remove the unflattering Pelosi deepfake, announced a deepfake ban in January.

Robert Prigge, CEO of Jumio, highlighted the danger posed by deepfake videos and called for a technology-based solution to uncloaking falsified videos.

Prigge commented: “Deepfakes pose a serious threat to the digital economy and the evolution of digital identity because it’s far too easy to use AI to create realistic deepfakes—and they can be weaponized to commit fraud. 

“To prevent deepfakes from becoming the next leading attack vector, advanced authentication methods, such as face-based authentication, must be able to detect and stop deepfakes in order to stay ahead of the rapidly evolving fraud curve.”