Scammers have been around for decades: from letters to email messages to apps. Over the years Hornet have built many defensive measures to keep our community safe from fraudsters and fakes including use of AI and manual account checks. However, there are still some profiles getting through.
This articles gives you a quick intro on what steps you can take in order to protect yourself from spammers, scammers and fake profiles.
First of all, be careful sharing personal information with others, in private conversations, or in your profile. Never give out your physical addresses, phone numbers, bank account details, or photos of official documents and daily routine, util you get to know the person better. If someone asks you for any type of your personal information, especially when you are in the beginning of e-getting to know each other, – this should alert you. In this case, the best would be to report the user so our moderation team can review them.
This became an axiom, but lets repeat it once again – Never share your password with anyone! Even if you trust someone, your personal password must only be known to you. In this case, noone can hack into your profile and stole your personal information. It’s also important that you choose a very strong password. These are made of upper case letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols – all in random order. Here are some examples (do not use them!):
- {7!Qb_8$LS8e7@AiX22%
- JpL9$6xjujB[qsVt
If you find them difficult to remember, you can use a password manager. They are readily available online and are often free to use. Choose the trusted one, for example Google or Apple Password Managers.
Be extremely cautious if someone asks you to go to another messenger, such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, Snapchat, etc. Remember that fraudsters can be inventive in their attempts to convince you to switch the conversation to another place – they can be saying that Hornet doesn’t work properly for them (which is not true), that the other place is more convenient for communicating, they have reached a limit of messages they can send on Hornet (not true – we do not limit chats), they do not use Hornet often because they live a “closeted” life, and many other excuses. Our advice for you – do not transfer the conversation to another messenger unless you are 100% sure you are talking to a real, trusted person.
But if you did so, remember not to share any personal information or nude photos with the person as they might use this against you. If bad actors get this information, they can threaten the victim with disclosing personal information, sending nude photos to the victim’s family, etc. unless the victim gives them an X amount of money. If you find yourself in such a situation, be sure to contact law enforcement agencies, only they can take appropriate action in this case.
If you see anything that doesn’t look or feel real, most likely it is, trust your instincts and report the user and our moderation team will closely review the profile. This article explains how you can report the user. The more people report the bad actors, the faster we can get rid of them.
The best indicator showing that you are talking to a real person – the verification mark. If the user’s got it, it means we manually checked their photo taken in real-time and compared it to other photos in their profile. You can read more about it here.
We also recommend you to read following articles:
- Hornet General Safety Tips
- What is a spam attack?
- Safety tips when you are in an anti-LGBTQ country
- Does Hornet give any cash prizes?
If you cannot find a solution in our FAQ, please write to us at feedback@hornet.com. It is important that you include your Account ID so that we can trace your account. Your Account ID is located on your profile, on the top center of the screen, and begins with the “@” symbol.
