When was a website created

Knowing how to look up when a website address was first registered can help you identify scams.
What is demonstrated in my video below is just one of many different ways to look up when a website address was registered.

This web page began as an introduction to performing who is look ups, and grew into my magnum opus on recognizing dating related scams.
As you scroll down this page, you will begin to learn to both:

The sad reality is that for many people, this information can only be learned from experience, not taught in advance.
In those cases, I hope to at least make the learning curve a little shorter.

Outline Of Topics Below

When Was match.com First Registered?

If you are a straight woman, you should expect to receive a large amount of interest on any legitimate dating website.
Most of the interest will fall into one of the two categories below:

If you are a straight male, you should expect to receive only a small amount of communication on any well-established dating website.
Of the communication that a straight male might receive, much of it will fall into the following categories:

No matter what someone's gender is, it is easy to imagine someone choosing a scammer with an extraordinary profile over a legitimate suitor.

Red Flags

Below I will go over a meaningful, but not outright exhaustive, list of red flags.
I could try to be inclusive with phrases such as "he or she", but pronouns actually matter.
Straight women are searching for men with high status jobs.
Straight men are looking for physically attractive women
A given gay man might be looking for men who are physically attractive and/or have high status jobs.

There will likely be at least some men who recognize the above red flags, and reply anyway.
They fail to recognize that such accounts may be handled by bots and/or workers in call center type facilities.

A Sophisticated Scam?

Some news stories that we read about, such as the CIA's cyberattack that disabled Iranian centrifuges, may be so incredibly sophisticated that they sound like science fiction.
People may want to label every scam that they personally fall victim to as similarly being a "sophisticated scam".
The scams that people fall victim to are usually not that sophisticated, but people refuse to follow the warnings on this web page.
Regardless of the actual level of sophistication of any one scam, as we dig deeper into this topic, I would like to remind readers of the following Lily Tomlin quotation:

Websites That Have Scammers Versus Websites That Are Simply Scams

In this section, I will try to thread the needle between building awareness of scam dating websites and avoiding writing a tutorial on creating scam websites.
In contrast to well-established websites such as match.com, there is also the category of websites that are simply scams.
A scam dating website might charge a monthly fee, or it might have the even insidious business model of charging for users to communicate with one another.
The communication may be very expensive, but the website may gamify the cost with promotions to make users feel like they are getting deals.

Naive Users

Someone else may have different categories, but I place users of scam websites into 2 categories:

Regarding internet scams, I might suggest adding a third category of naive people:

Fake Profiles And Fear Of Missing Out

A common technique which scam dating websites employ is to create fake profiles of seemingly extremely desirable people in order to entice naive users into buying expensive credits.
The fake profiles may suggest that a user is extremely physically attractive and/or has a high status job.
Maybe someone reading a fake website has seen my website and watched my videos.
He notices that a dating website was only created a year ago
He receives likes, winks, or some other indication of interest from 100 women who look like swimsuit models.
He thinks "OK, the website is new, which IS suspicious."

So, You Are Telling Me There Is A Chance?

However what if even 2% of the women who look like swimsuit models are actually legitimate??
He does the math.
With the promotion in place right now, 30 credits will cost $30, and sending the initial communication to another user costs $10.
With his estimate of 2% of the users being real, he will use his judgement to determine a subset of the users who are real.
He is feeling bold, so he contacts 10 users, for a cost of $100.
Isn't $100 a bargain for the chance to meet an attractive woman or a wealthy man?
The user has fallen into the scammer's trap.

The most likely scenario is that not merely 98% of the people who contacted him were scams, but 100% of the people of the people who contacted him were scams.
If he is very lucky, the $100 is all that he will lose.
If only 2% of the profiles are who contacted him are legitimate, then identifying which users are legitimate would be difficult.
However, if 100% of the users who contacted him are scammers, then identifying any legitimate users would be impossible.
All ten of the users that he contacted reply to him.
A given scam dating website may or may not charge him to read each email.
Six of the ten replies were very short and/or boiler plate, suggesting scam users.
He continues communicating with the remaining four.
All four of the remainder offer to send photos, but opening each photo costs 10 credits.
For those three users, he opens a total of 40 photos, for a cost of $400.
He spent $400 to view photos of women who do not even know their photos were sent to him, or perhaps the photos were AI generated.
He could have viewed Playboy content for less.

Curious, But Not That Curious

I am somewhat curious about how communication is sent on behalf of scam profiles, but not curious enough to want to do more than create this section of my web page.
Far enough into the future, the communication from scam profiles on scam websites will be done primarily through AI.
For now, my guess is that much communication is performed with live people, performing the scam communication as a job.
A scammer from a low-income Spanish speaking country might adopt the persona of someone in his or own country, or he or she may choose to pretend to be a Spanish speaking person in California or Florida.
Someone operating a scam profile might be:

Recent Registration Dates

Often, but NOT always, a scam website will have a recent registration date.
A recent registration date suggests danger.
However, an old registration date does not automatically mean that a website is safe to use.
Ask yourself, why would some new dating website have profiles that are somehow superior to those of well-established dating websites?

Autocorrect: Threat Or Menace?

Alternative Links

The links below are alternative ways of looking up website registration information.
Other than being a user like any one of you might be, I have no connection to whois.com or any of the websites below.