'Are you single, old man?': Al scams on the rise

Online fraud is more common and convincing than ever. But knowing what to look for can help one avoid falling for it

- Teo Kai Xiang

"I've been wanting to see you for a long time," reads a recent post on social media platform Threads, accompanied by an image of a woman gazing into the camera from the back seat of a car. “Where are you from? I'll come to you.”

“I'm in Singapore, hbu?” one user replies, using the abbreviation for “how about you” and seemingly unaware that the woman is not real.

Identifying herself as Nicolette Smith, this woman is the face of a new breed of digital deception flooding social media.

The account follows a repetitive pattern, posting endless variations of the same posed photos, always paired with a suggestive caption, often in broken English.

One post abandons all subtlety: “Are you single, old man? I am looking for true love.”

The response is staggering.

Hundreds comment on each post, many of whom appear genuinely convinced. “I’m a retired single widower,’ writes one user.

Another says: “I was married for 45 years when my wife passed away.”

Many comment with their locations, everywhere from Singapore to Brisbane to Bucharest.

This account began posting in August and has since amassed over 16,000 followers, but it represents only the surface.

Meta, the company behind Threads and Facebook, did not respond to a request for comment about this and other examples of inauthentic content.

Dozens of other accounts - many of them also going by Nicolette Smith - exist on the platform. Though many have negligible followings, others achieve similar levels of engagement with the same strategy while posing as both women and men.

It is also a sign of how engagement-maximising algorithms and the rise of new tools intertwine to deliver inauthentic material to users at scale.

SCAM INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX