Something strange is happening in the advice women are being given.We are living through an extraordinary period of sophisticated fraud. Gover
Something strange is happening in the advice women are being given.
We are living through an extraordinary period of sophisticated fraud. Government agencies routinely warn us about romance scammers, fake employers, financial impostors, fraudulent recovery specialists, stalkerware, artificial intelligence, cloned voices, fake photographs and people who may spend weeks or months establishing trust before revealing what they actually want.
The Federal Trade Commission recently warned that even romance scams are becoming harder to recognize with the help of AI and other technology. A person can appear attentive, consistent and interested. He can talk with you every day. The relationship may develop long before money enters the conversation. Eventually there is an emergency, a canceled visit, a medical problem, a business crisis or some other reason he needs financial help.
At the very same time, women continue to receive another stream of cultural advice.
Be more open.
Give people a chance.
Do not be so suspicious.
Do not judge too quickly.
Do not assume the worst.
Think about how rejection makes the other person feel.
Be compassionate.
Be accommodating.
Somewhere between these two sets of instructions, women are expected to perform a rather impressive piece of gymnastics.
We are supposed to become increasingly skilled at detecting manipulation while remaining reluctant to exercise discernment until manipulation has been proven. “Don’t go on defense until the harm is obvious.”
Yeah, that makes no sense. Zero. And not a bit.
The Scam May Not Look Like a Scam Anymore
For years, one of the standard warnings about scams has been, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
There is still wisdom in that. But it is no longer enough.
The modern scam does not necessarily arrive wearing a ridiculous costume.
It may be a reasonable work-from-home opportunity when you badly need employment. In April 2026, the FTC warned about fake recruiters sending unsolicited messages advertising remote jobs. Some scammers no longer begin with an obviously suspicious link. They simply ask the recipient to reply “YES” or “INTERESTED.” Once contact is established, the supposed job can turn into a fake-check scheme or a “task” job where the worker eventually has to deposit her own money.
Think about the manipulation there.
The scammer doesn’t necessarily offer a woman a million dollars.
He offers her work.
Perhaps she has children and needs flexibility. Perhaps she recently left a relationship and needs income. Perhaps she is trying to rebuild. Perhaps she has been applying for legitimate jobs for months.
The door the scammer chooses is not stupidity.
It is need.
Sometimes the Door Is Love
Romance scams deserve particular attention from people who understand abuse because the mechanics can look remarkably familiar.
The relationship can begin with attention and conversation rather than money. There may be frequent communication, emotional intimacy and plans for a future together. Somehow, however, meeting in person remains impossible.
Eventually something goes wrong.
There is an emergency. A medical expense. Travel trouble. A financial crisis.
Now the relationship that has been carefully cultivated becomes the reason she should help.
The FTC warns that scammers may direct victims toward payment methods that are difficult to reverse, including wire transfers, gift cards, payment apps and cryptocurrency.
Abuse advocates should recognize something important here.
This is not merely a story about somebody being “fooled.”
It can be a story about grooming.
Trust is established before it is exploited. Emotional attachment develops before the request becomes costly. The victim may have invested months of her life before she realizes that the relationship she experienced was not the relationship she was actually in.
That deserves considerably more compassion than the old question, “How could she fall for that?”
A better question is: What did somebody deliberately do to make this believable?
Sometimes Someone Finds the Wound and Walks Through It
One of the cruelest scams currently being reported targets people who have already been victimized by another scam.
In August 2026, the FTC warned that refund and recovery scammers may obtain lists of previous scam victims. They then contact those people claiming to represent government agencies, consumer advocacy organizations or law firms. They promise that lost money can be recovered, but first the victim must pay a fee or provide financial information.
Read that again from a Survivor’s perspective.
Someone discovers where you were hurt and uses the wound as their entrance.
The victim may already feel embarrassed. She may desperately want to repair the financial damage. She may want to believe somebody in authority has finally arrived to help.
The second scammer exploits not only financial loss, but hope.
This is one reason shame is such a poor public-safety strategy. If people believe being deceived proves they are foolish, they become less willing to tell family members, advocates, financial institutions or authorities what happened. Silence can give the person exploiting them more room.
We should want people talking.
Sometimes It Is Not a Stranger at All
Digital safety for women and Survivors cannot stop at strangers asking for money.
The FTC also warns about stalkerware, software that an abusive partner or former partner can secretly install on someone’s device. Depending on the software, an abuser may be able to track location, read texts and emails, see photographs, monitor online activity or even access a phone’s microphone.
For a woman leaving an abusive relationship, the question may not be, “Did I click on a suspicious email?”
Her question may be, “How does he keep knowing where I am?”
That requires a different understanding of digital safety.
It also requires caution. The FTC warns that suddenly removing stalkerware could alert an abuser and potentially lead to escalation. For someone who suspects an abusive person is monitoring her device, safety planning and preserving evidence may need to come before simply deleting an application.
This is where conventional scam education and Survivor safety education need to start talking to each other.
Some Scams Are Digitally Delivered Grooming
The person does not necessarily begin by asking for $5,000.
He may begin by listening and remembering what you told him.
Someone else may begin by offering employment at exactly the moment you need it.
Another may arrive claiming he can recover something somebody already stole from you.
Someone may approach while you are grieving, frightened, lonely, financially strained or trying to start over.
And someone else may simply present himself as the first person in a long time who truly understands.
None of those circumstances indicate foolishness.
They indicate that human beings have emotional lives, financial needs, hopes, responsibilities and relationships. People who manipulate others study those things because those things are human.
That is why our safety education has to grow up.
Women Do Not Need to Abandon Their Values to Become Safer
I do not want women walking through life believing everybody is dangerous.
I don’t want women becoming cruel, contemptuous or incapable of generosity.
Kindness is a beautiful value.
So are compassion, fairness, openness, generosity and the willingness to see humanity in other people.
Keep them.
But add discernment.
Add boundaries.
Add patience.
Add verification.
Add the willingness to tolerate somebody else’s disappointment while you gather information.
Add permission to say, “I don’t know you well enough yet.”
Women need to understand something that should have been taught alongside kindness all along: being a good person does not require immediately granting another person trust, access or accommodation.
You can treat somebody with dignity while declining their request.
You can hear someone’s sad story without becoming responsible for solving it.
You can enjoy someone’s company without giving them private information.
You can be interested in someone without sending intimate photographs.
You can consider a job without handing over financial information.
You can love someone and still verify what they are telling you.
You can care deeply and still say no.
There is no moral contradiction there.
Ask a Different Question
Instead of relying entirely on whether something “feels like a scam,” ask:
What is this person trying to get me to do before I have independently verified who they are?
Then ask another:
What happens when I slow this interaction down?
A legitimate bank can survive you hanging up and calling the verified number on your card.
A legitimate employer can survive you researching the company independently.
A legitimate organization can survive questions.
A healthy romantic prospect can survive boundaries.
A trustworthy person can survive not yet.
Pressure tells us something.
So does anger when we ask reasonable questions. So does insistence that we keep a conversation secret. So does an attempt to separate us from people who might offer another perspective. So does a sudden emergency that somehow requires us to act before we have time to think.
None of those things automatically proves criminal intent.
But they are more than enough reason to slow down.
Discernment Is Not Cruelty
Women are navigating a world in which manipulation is becoming technologically sophisticated while some cultural messages still treat female caution as a personality problem.
We cannot have it both ways.
We cannot tell women that scammers may use artificial intelligence, fake identities, months of relationship-building, sophisticated impersonation and psychological manipulation, then scold women for withholding trust until people have earned it.
We cannot warn women about grooming and simultaneously shame them for noticing when somebody is moving too quickly.
We cannot teach women about coercive control and then insist that another person’s disappointment is evidence that their boundary was unkind.
Women should stand by their morals. Stand by their principles. Stand by compassion where compassion is deserved.
And stand by their judgment too.
Safety does not require becoming suspicious of every human being who crosses your path. It requires understanding that trust and kindness are not the same transaction.
Kindness can be offered freely.
Trust requires information.
Access requires consent.
And when something feels confusing, you are allowed to stop moving long enough to understand what is happening.
You do not owe anyone a rushed decision merely because they would prefer one.
The world has become sophisticated enough about manipulation that our advice to women must become sophisticated too.
Sex-Based Social Control Is Not About Beauty. It’s About Access to Humanity. – WE Survive Abuse
When Is a Woman’s “No” Not Considered a Form of Hate? – WE Survive Abuse
When the Mask Matters More Than the Truth, Survivors Are Pushed to Disappear – WE Survive Abuse
6 Common Behaviors of Female Enablers of Abusive Males (infographic) – WE Survive Abuse
✊🏾 Teaching Before the Harm: The Difference Between Comfort and Safety – WE Survive Abuse