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The six signals worth taking seriously
A story that keeps changing: the city, the job, the reason they cannot video call. A refusal to move to a live call even once. Photos that look professional rather than personal. A friend and follower list that does not match the claimed life. A sudden request for money, gift cards or account access. And pressure to move off the platform where you met.
Any single one can have an innocent explanation. Three or more together are a pattern, and the pattern is the thing to act on.
Verify with a handle, not a hunch
Their username is often the most concrete thing you have. Search it across platforms and look for the accounts that were not made for you — older ones, with history, that contradict the story you were told.
Then check the inverse: does the "established" account they pointed you to have the fingerprints of a real history, or was it created recently and padded with reposts?
Photos are the fastest test
Reverse-image search remains the single highest-yield check. If the profile photo belongs to a completely different person, an actor or a stock model, the identity is borrowed and nothing else in the conversation needs explaining.
Look at the photo set as a whole, not just the main image. Catfish accounts tend to reuse an entire album from one source, and the same album usually appears on several unrelated profiles.
When to stop engaging and report
Once you are confident the identity is false, stop feeding it information. Do not confront, do not warn, and do not send anything that identifies you further — the account's owner is now someone who knows you were looking.
Preserve the evidence first: screenshots with the URL bar and timestamps, before you block. Then report to the platform and, if money was requested or sent, to the relevant fraud channel.